The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Hi, I’m Advik and I’m a sophomore in high school. I love to read, watch TV, write, hang out with friends, and be outside.
I read The Tempest by William Shakespeare. The Tempest blends magic, betrayal, mythology, and romance into a single story with many characters. It explores many overarching themes, such as knowledge, power, and perspective. I personally found this book hard to enjoy due to the old, Shakespearean language and its difficulty to understand. Overall, the story itself was interesting, but the language made it extremely hard to stay engaged.
The Tempest follows Prospero, the former Duke of Milan, who was overthrown and then left on a stranded island with his daughter Miranda. Before he got abandoned, he was much into magic, so he used his magical abilities to cause a shipwreck of all of his enemies onto the island. As more of the story unfolds, Prospero tries to seek revenge against his enemies, but in the end, his enemies apologized and he chooses forgiveness and gives up his magical powers. Throughout this play, it was evident that perspective was a major theme in the book, and you could take whatever side of the story you wanted; it just mattered how you looked at it.
Even though I didn’t enjoy the book, it was a good learning experience on how Shakespeare writes and on literary devices in general. I would recommend this book for teachers and students in high school and for people interested in classic literature and plays.
