Further, Frank and Felix invest in the rigid gender stereotypes that the culture has sold to them which come at a steep cost to them: familial estrangement and constant inner conflict, and those around them. The Tempest emboldens future artists like Osment and Atwood to attack society’s most messy and uncomfortable issues like sexuality and race. Shakespeare’s The Tempest boldly holds a mirror to society, and exposes and critiques its flaws. Out of all works of literature from which Osment could have chosen, he went with a wacky 17th century play. Shakespeare would be proud of himself in seeing that Osment has genuinely united his play’s struggle with The Tempest. Luke having seen this and upon arriving home is ashamed and censors what he had planned to say. This is evident in the first scene as his schoolmates limply flap their wrists to mock Luke’s sexuality and the billboards that he passes blatantly instruct parents to not teach their children to be gay. However, Luke lives in England’s fierce homophobic society during the 1980’s under the conservative leadership of Margaret Thatcher. The play opens with Luke, a small boy, pedaling home on his bike and anticipating how he will tell his parents, Frank and Maggie, he is gay. In This Island’s Mine there are families and friends whose experiences mimic themes of The Tempest like loneliness, rejection, and subjugation. Along the way many of the same ills that plagued Shakespeare’s society continue to linger like misogyny, corruption, and unjust incarceration. Hag-Seed is a novel and follows the Prospero equivalent Felix in his fall from and rise to power. The Tempest adaptations, Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood and This Island’s Mine by Philip Osment have created just as complex, cynical, and zealous of a set of characters as the characters in Shakespeare’s original work itself. “Where do we come from? What Are we? Where Are we going?” is a painting by French artist Paul Gauguin.

Anne marie hag seed