Moving to specifics, on the left side of my illustration, I decided to place the Caliban-figure in a stance representing his resilience: the arms outstretched and feet flat on the ground as if he is preparing to stand. Although he may have previously been overcome by the difficulty of his task, remaining stationary simply to hold the weight of the rock, he gets ready to continue on. Drawing from Brathwaite’s play-on-words between “write,” “rite,” and “right,” which, to me, suggest that a heavy burden facing Caliban comes from language itself, I chose to add letters of the alphabet on the boulder to highlight this notion. “Caliban” appears etched into it, as well, because this identity, and even the name itself, are additional weights he must carry as he is put into boxes by Prospero and others. The right side, is meant to display the lasting effects of Caliban’s writing, leaving the viewer with the repeated affirmation “i is a somebody” (that is positioned specifically at the top of the hill), asserting his place in the world and the power of his words.
For this assignment, I chose to illustrate “Letter SycoraX,” particularly focusing on the imagery of Sisyphus employed by Brathwaite throughout the second part of the poem. I was drawn to this idea because of its ability to powerfully depict important aspects of “Caliban’s” struggle – the heavy burden, its cyclic nature, and, thus, the feeling of frustration. He repeatedly writes, “a cyaan get nutten write,” therefore declaring this feeling of not being good enough and not being able to live up to the standards forced upon him by the “Prosperos,” while he emphasizes the prolonged experience of “slide / in black down” and losing any progress he might have made. Another key aspect of the poem that I tried to capture here in the rough, unpolished style of this drawing, is Caliban’s relaxed imperfection in the letter, which I found to be a strong source of argumentation in itself: Brathwaite’s writing showcases a version of Caliban that does not appeal to any audience other than his own mother, SycoraX, enabling him to reveal emotions ranging from anger to joy. In a similar way, leaving these imperfections in my own visual interpretation of the text allowed me to include ideas I may not have been able to otherwise, like the way previous iterations of the sketch remain visible in layers underneath, as if they represent such parts of Caliban’s identity.
Moving to specifics, on the left side of my illustration, I decided to place the Caliban-figure in a stance representing his resilience: the arms outstretched and feet flat on the ground as if he is preparing to stand. Although he may have previously been overcome by the difficulty of his task, remaining stationary simply to hold the weight of the rock, he gets ready to continue on. Drawing from Brathwaite’s play-on-words between “write,” “rite,” and “right,” which, to me, suggest that a heavy burden facing Caliban comes from language itself, I chose to add letters of the alphabet on the boulder to highlight this notion. “Caliban” appears etched into it, as well, because this identity, and even the name itself, are additional weights he must carry as he is put into boxes by Prospero and others. The right side, is meant to display the lasting effects of Caliban’s writing, leaving the viewer with the repeated affirmation “i is a somebody” (that is positioned specifically at the top of the hill), asserting his place in the world and the power of his words.
1 Comment
Dashmi
1/13/2024 03:49:28 pm
Love this Ally!!!
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