Mama Day and The Tempest

As we discussed in class, many of the parallels that we are able to draw between The Tempest and Mama Day are made possible through the knowledge we already have about Shakespeare. Some of the commonalities between the two stories are the "rough" magic, the significance of love between two people, the setting of an island, the importance of family, and betrayal. Some of these may be coincidences. Many mystical novels take place in secluded towns where the people are disconnected from civilization. This sets up for many things to go awry. Many stories also focus on a budding romance between two young people. This too sets up the plot for many things to go wrong because love does not always turn out perfectly as people think it is supposed to.

The Tempest is not the only Shakespeare play that resonates throughout Mama Day. We see themes of Romeo and Juliet as well. George and Ophelia are the star-crossed lovers who are deeply in love with one another, but are from two very different worlds that clash. Their worlds are so different that it ends up causing the demise of their relationship because George cannot accept to do things the way that the islanders do them- he'd rather do them his own way. On page 302 of the novel, Mama Day states, "he went and did it his way, so he ain't coming back." This shows a fundamental problem in having two people from very different worlds- it's tough to compromise. And this is what we see in Romeo and Juliet.

Many of the name choices are also the same names from different Shakespearean plays, including Ophelia and Miranda. There are many references to Shakespearean literature throughout Mama Day, including the reading and analysis of King Lear by George and Miranda. Cocoa talks about how Shakespeare did not really have the much depth to his literature. If we look at Mama Day as a post-modern African American novel, we can see some of Gloria Naylor's use of dialogue between the characters in a special way. In the beginning of the novel, Cocoa states that Shakespeare simply wrote about a slave on an island, and that there wasn't substance to his writing. This is a HUGE parallel between The Tempest and Mama Day. Here, Cocoa was referring to Caliban as the slave on Prospero's island. Sapphira was the slave in Mama Day who was literally trapped in slavery until she got her eternal freedom from Bascombe Wade. In a way, though, all of the islanders were kind of enslaved by the island. Cocoa seems to be the only who to ever really leave permanently, but even she finds herself stuck on the island with George when the bridge burns down. Both of these islands have a way of trapping their residents.

 I also see a parallelism between Ariel and Cocoa in a way. Prospero is able to work his magic through the workings of Ariel. Without Ariel, Prospero's actions and magic would not be as potent. Similarly, Mama Day's magic and intuition lives through Cocoa. Without having Cocoa as the so-called "beneficiary" of the family's supernatural powers, Mama Day's magic and extra sense wouldn't be as potent either.

Even though Naylor has stated that she did not consciously correlate her novel with Shakespearean novels, I think there was some loose adaptations that were crafted for some reason, whether it was an obvious one or not. Shakespearean literature was based around an audience that was mainly white Europeans. But the audience of Naylor's Mama Day is much more diverse than that. So I think that she tailors her novel to the audience, to allow for different interpretations of Shakespearean literature, themes, characters and plots in a time setting that related to them.