The similar treatment of these very different minor characters highlight's Prospero's obsession with control, as well as his own return to the human world. Consider that although Prospero mourns his exile, he even uses captivity as an enticement for Miranda and Ferdinand's courtship, forcing the young man to carry wood like he does Caliban. The young man responds cheerfully, "There be some sports are painful, and their labor/Delight in them sets off: some kinds of baseness/Are nobly undergone and most poor matters/Point to rich ends. (3.1) But the comparison as well as the contrast between the suitor and the rapist in their similar labors and different emotional responses to that labor adds further depth to the pairing of freedom and captivity themes that structure the play.

Thus, all of the minor character in "The Tempest" highlight different forms of freedom and incarceration, and exist in binary oppositions only in their...
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