In this piece, I aimed to produce a metaphorical image of Caliban at his computer, writing his letter to his mother. The ideas he’s writing are represented by the ghostly X floating above the computer monitor – the fact that it doesn’t exist entirely on the computer itself is meant to indicate that Brathwaite’s writing has some component that transcends traditional language. I’ve made the computer and its components representative of lingual convention: since Caliban’s ideas can’t be fully rendered into orthodox English, they don’t reside entirely on the computer screen. The keyboard, representing traditional English grammatical and rhetorical tools – the literary input device, if you will – dangles from the desk, clearly unused. Caliban renders his thoughts directly onto the screen without passing them through the filter of grammatical correctness (the keyboard) first, chiseling them into electric stone, “writin in light.” The keyboard doesn’t even have the correct number or arrangement of keys, a suggestion that perhaps literary English isn’t as well-defined as we think it is, and totally not a result of my being too lazy to count them. The mouse, representing post-writing editing of thoughts to make them more nuanced and better fit them into a conventional literary framework, lies not only unused but completely unplugged, representing Caliban’s unwillingness to dilute or filter his thoughts, a trait of his that Brathwaite brought over from Shakespeare’s Caliban, and his unwillingness to hide his contempt for Prospero even when he knew the duke was listening to him.
As for Caliban himself, I’ve drawn him seated in an office chair, wearing semi-formal clothing, seemingly comfortable in a civilized environment, to show how Brathwaite adapts Caliban to transfer him into a new cultural context. However, I’ve given Caliban long, unkempt hair, to indicate that he still defies tradition and constraint of agency despite his new cultural identity. I’ve drawn him relaxed and comfortable, to indicate that putting his thoughts directly onto his tablet of light, conjuring the floating X that would seem extraordinary to any other person, is actually easier for Caliban than using the keyboard and mouse would be – accustomed as he is to thinking freely, he has an easier time writing exactly what he thinks than he would translating his thoughts into traditional language.