first-person narrative embedded in another first-person narrative that approaches tragedy or at documents the degradation of a human being who reaches too far for too much. But they coincide on a variety of issue fronts. Some comparisons are easily made. The Tempest's Caliban has been interpreted not only as a prototype of New World Indians who were being displayed in Europe in Shakespeare's day but also as an imperfect anagram of cannibal, a term that had entered English usage by way of Renaissance exploration in general and Montaigne's essay "Of Cannibals." Heart of Darkness frequently refers to the indigenous Congolese as cannibals, niggers, natives, Negroes, savages, always characterizing the people while never quite referring to them as people within the European meaning of the word. The monstrosity of Caliban can also be compared to the exotic and horrific strangeness and otherness that Marlow encounters when seeking Kurtz upriver in Heart of Darkness. The peculiar attack of "twigs" that turn out to be arrows meant to warn off the steamboat an
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