Question

Answer briefly the questions that the passage follows:

Prospero:

This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child, And here was left by th’ sailors. Thou, my slave, As thou report’st thyself, was then her servant, And for thou wast a spirit too delicate To act her earthy and abhorr’d commands,  Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee, By help of her more potent ministers And in her most unmitigable rage, Into a cloven pine.....

1. What leads Prospero to talk about the ‘blue-eyed hag’?     [1]
2. Why was she brought to this island?     [2]
3. What account do we get of Ariel’s suffering in the cloven pine? Who had saved him and how?     [2]
4. How does Prospero describe the hag’s son?     [2]
5. What does Prospero threaten to do to Ariel now? What effect does his threat have on Ariel?     [2]
6. Give the meanings of the following words in the context of the passage:     [1]
   abhorr’d, cloven

Answer 1

1. After Ariel narrates how he accomplished the task of the tempest, Prospero tells him to do more work. When Ariel reminds him that he was promised freedom, Prospero reminds Ariel how grateful he should be to him for his. present freedom from the blue-eyed Sycorax.
2. Sycorax was brought to the island because she was practicing sorcery. She was pregnant with the child of an evil spirit and was banished from Algiers for her wicked acts.
3. Ariel, the spirit of air, valued freedom, but he was imprisoned in a cloven pine for twelve years by Sycorax, and then she died without freeing him. Ariel cried in agony, which resounded in the island. Even the wolves howl at his groans, and it also penetrated the breasts of the ever-angry bears. It was Prospero with his superior magic who freed him from his agony.
4. Prospero describes Caliban, the son of Sycorax, as “A freckle whelp hag born,” which means he was hag-born, that is, he was not born in a human shape. He also says that the whelp is a dull thing.
5. Prospero warns Ariel that if he complains again, he will tear open an oak tree and confine him as a prisoner within its knotty roots for another twelve winters. Ariel apologizes and promises to follow his master’s instructions like an obedient spirit.
6. The meaning of ‘abhor’d’ is most hated. ‘Cloven’ means split into two; this is in reference to the pine tree that pinned Ariel so tightly that he could not escape from it for twelve years.