Revenge
Revenge is one of the primary catalysts for the plot of the novel, as Felix's production of The Tempest is a long-term project aimed at getting back at Tony and Sal after they usurped him. Felix begins thinking about revenge once he starts working at Fletcher Correctional Facility's Literacy Through Literature program. He becomes obsessed with his original idea for The Tempest and plans to stage an interactive theater version at Fletcher in which Tony, Sal, and other administrative figures will be present. The novel is careful not to reveal Felix's particular form of revenge until the performance of the play itself. This suspense lends the novel a sense of mystery much like the strange magic Prospero is able to conjure in Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Because Hag-Seed is a retelling of the Shakespearean play, the notion of revenge is crucial for understanding individual characters' motivations. Felix, like Prospero, was ousted in his role as Artistic Director; Prospero was the former King of Naples before his brother, Antonio, overthrew him and exiled him to the island where the play takes place. While the parallel between the two characters is made clear throughout the novel, their shared desire for revenge is indicative of one of the major conflicts present in both works: not merely the conflict between Felix and his usurpers, but also the internal conflict Felix himself must confront when his deft control of the environment around him faces a number of threats. For both Felix and Prospero, the desire for revenge comes to replace all other modes of motivation, and it is both their only path to salvation and their greatest obstacle to overcome.
Prisons and Confinement
The question of "what constitutes a prison?" is one of the central inquiries in the novel. Felix pitches The Tempest to the inmates at Fletcher Correctional Facility by explaining to them that it is a play fundamentally concerned with confinement and what happens to people when they are kept behind bars, both figuratively and literally. He challenges the men to identify each prison present in the play, and by the end of the novel, they have found all but one. Felix explains that the final prison is the play itself: Prospero requires the audience's applause to escape the island. Ending on this note suggests that Felix has also imprisoned himself in his own production of The Tempest; he has fallen victim to his own obsession with revenge, and the novel remains ambiguous as to whether he will be able to successfully escape his self-confinement.
Grief and Loss
Both Prospero and Felix have daughters named Miranda, but readers learn early on that Felix's daughter died before she turned five years old. It is clear that Felix has never recovered from the loss of Miranda and, just as Prospero finds himself marooned on an island with his daughter, so Felix carries the ghost of Miranda around with him at all times. He imagines her living with him in his run-down shack, fantasizes about teaching her how to play chess, and even casts her as Ariel's unofficial understudy in his production of The Tempest at Fletcher. Felix's grief over the loss of his daughter manifests, then, as an inability to grasp fully the reality of which he is a part, and his interactions with the imagined Miranda can be considered escapist fantasies in which he, like Prospero, attempts to control and mediate fate.
The conclusion of the novel suggests that Felix has been able to cope with the loss through his production of The Tempest. In all his literary discussions he has with the actors about the various prisons in the play, the men seem particularly drawn to the character of Ariel as a prisoner of Prospero's whims. At the end of The Tempest, Prospero announces Ariel's freedom. At the end of Hag-Seed, Felix uses the language of Prospero to "free" the memory of his daughter Miranda: "To the elements be free," Felix says. The narration then confirms, "And, finally, she is" (292). This use of Shakespearean language at this particular point in the story indicates that through his production of the play, Felix has experienced some form of growth that has allowed him to finally leave the past behind and pursue a future untainted by extreme grief.
Transformation through Art and Theater
Throughout the novel, Atwood champions the idea that art, the humanities, creativity, and theater specifically can be used for personal growth among diverse groups of people. The inmates, for example, benefit from their participation in The Tempest in that it provides them with an outlet to experiment with their own creativity in a space that is usually heavily surveilled and controlled by others. As such, a number of inmates find themselves identifying with particular characters in The Tempest—notably Ariel, who is under Prospero's control—and that identification leads to an unconventional but meaningful interpretation of how the play should be performed. Ariel, for example, is represented as an alien rather than a fairy, a result of the inmates' discussion of him as someone markedly isolated in the world of the play.
The inmates, however, are not the only people to personally benefit from their attention to Shakespeare's theater. Felix, too, uses the forum of theater not only to successfully execute his revenge, but also, subconsciously, to overcome his grief over the loss of his daughter. Just as Felix enriches the minds of the actors with detailed discussions about The Tempest and theater more generally, so do the actors enrich Felix's otherwise lonely life. Throughout the novel, Atwood juxtaposes scenes of energetic and engaged dialogue at Fletcher with slow-paced and macabre depictions of Felix home alone in his run-down shack. This alternation between moments of sociality and isolation help illustrate how the Literacy Through Literature program encourages personal growth for those learning and those instructing alike.
The Accessibility of Shakespeare
Through the basic plot of the Fletcher Correctional Facility players, readers are able to see how the relatively unfamiliar territory of English Renaissance drama becomes relevant for contemporary actors. As Felix begins to educate the inmates about The Tempest, he encourages them to relate to characters and to think seriously about how their trajectories in the play relate to their own lives both before and after their incarceration. As mentioned, some actors are drawn to the character of Ariel, who is powerful but at the mercy of a master, while others sympathize more with Caliban and his status as a "thing of darkness." Regardless, the novel emphasizes through the production of The Tempest that Shakespeare is not necessarily the high-brow, elitist, impenetrable literary figure he is often made out to be. Instead, the novel celebrates his accessibility as a playwright for a wide range of audiences.
The Timelessness of Shakespeare
The novel engages with the timelessness of Shakespeare is through its own allegorical style. That is, the novel serves as a re-telling of The Tempest at the same time that its plot involves a revamped version of the play. By drawing clear parallels between Felix and Prospero, among other pairs of characters, the novel itself helps catapult Shakespearean themes (of revenge, grief, memory, etc.) into the twenty-first century. Readers are able to experience the "classic" literature of the Renaissance through a lens that engages with similar plots and lessons in a contemporary setting. Thus, the novel itself represents a celebration of Shakespeare's work as that which can transcend its own particular historical period.
Art as a means of Existential Liberation
For the inmates at Fletcher Correctional, Felix's production of The Tempest serves as a means by which they may evaluate and reflect on their own situation as imprisoned persons in society. But beyond appealing to their current environment, the collaborative performance of the play also signifies one of the primary ways the inmates can experience a semblance of life outside of imprisonment. They are granted a certain amount of freedom as part of their participation in the play, and Felix encourages a professional environment based on mutual respect and understanding. It is significant, then, that Felix transitions from referring to the men as "inmates" to referring to them as "actors," suggesting a degree of liberation and empowerment to be found in working together on an artistic endeavor.
