Micro Thesis Examples On Tempest & Hag-Seed

Resource Description

This is the practice essay I made which helped me prepare for the HSC. It includes my microthesis, quotes, and extensive analysis on the context of Tempest and Hag-Seed.

In textual conversation, the later text is often seen as a shadow, lacking the originality and power of the earlier

To what extent is this statement true of the two prescribed texts you have studied in Module A?

This statement is true to a great extent as it reflects the dissonances and resonances between William Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, and Margaret Atwood’s postmodern retelling of the text, Hag-Seed. Derived from a Christian humanist and Jacobean perspective, The Tempest explores metatheatricality and the power theatre holds to reveal the ephemerality of life by which one can accept by repenting to God. Similarly, Atwood uses the significant power of theatre to reveal the transient nature of one’s life however contrasting to Shakespeare, Atwood expresses this from a secular realist view by touching on the importance of living in the moment and gaining closure rather than repenting to a divine being. Shakespeare highlights the importance of forgiveness in human nature as a means to living out the true Christian humanist and Elizabethan way of life to achieve eternal life. Hag-Seed, however, causes readers to question society’s inability to forgive as Atwood does not maintain the religious ideals that Shakespeare holds thus, post-modern audiences are provoked to reflect on the lack of mercy in human nature. By creating a textual conversation between two contrasting texts, we are able to explore the dissonances and resonances that a post-modern text has developed from a renaissance piece thus creating questions for whether Hag-Seed lacks the originality and power of The Tempest.