Preserving Brathwaite’s motif, I chose to represent the Caribbean audience with X’s. In “Letter Sycorax,” although the X diminishes and conceals meaning in Caliban’s descriptions, it simultaneously draws attention to them. Brathwaite exploits this quality of the X, appropriating its function in order to explicitly mark the existence of minorities, just as Caliban asserts his minority presence by rebelling against the rules of standard written English. I emphasized this aspect of the X, in which the minority group is spotlighted, by using color solely surrounding my representation of the Caribbean audience. Unlike the other figures in my artwork, which represent the majority audience of Brathwaite’s poem, the Caribbean audience has access to the words of the poem and their meanings; lines that may be difficult for the outsider, majority audience to unpack, float readily above the Caribbean audience. This aspect of my artwork was particularly influenced by the lines, “not fe dem/ not fe dem / de way caliban / done / but fe we / fe a-we” - “dem” being the white audience and “we” being the Caribbean audience (Brathwaite 106). Unlike Shakespeare’s Caliban, who speaks Propsero’s language, Brathwaite’s Caliban speaks in his native language for his Carribean audience. I was also influenced by the far different lines, “goin down / goin down / goin down” no matter “how. / ever / yu / runnin up runnin up runnin up” (112).Caught between feelings of empowerment and disempowerment throughout the poem, Brathwaite’s Caliban is unable to erase the experiences of Shakespeare’s Caliban, and must endure timeless oppression and disempowerment as a minority within majority culture. Using Brathwaite’s moving staircase reference, I represented this concept in the top left corner of my drawing. Although the Caribbean audience has an advantage in understanding over majority culture, they ultimately cannot escape their disadvantaged place in society. However, while oppression is timeless, so is the existence and endurance of minorities, who can never be entirely erased or removed from society - a point that is also emphasized through my use of color.
It is possible that in my adaptation Caliban’s individuality is lost, as it is quite abstract and anonymous. Nevertheless, this anonymity and generality provides new insight on minority culture, and the experiences of minorities such as Caliban, who are denied individuality in majority society. This anonymity also, though, brings to light the fact that minorities have many shared experiences due to the timeless disempowerment that they must endure.