Sharee Campbell uses familiar visual symbols to depict the power dynamics in The Tempest. The chess pieces can be readily understood as depicting the characters as “pawns” in a power struggle, while the chess board can be seen as representing the stage of action. By attaching a ball and chain to both a pawn—a symbol of powerlessness—and the queen—a symbol of power —she demonstrates, like Césaire, the way that the system of colonialism ensnares both colonizer and colonized. The disembodied hands that seem to emanate from the island itself, and the crown that perches atop a volcano rising from the sand, force us to question who is actually “pulling the strings,” so to speak. While Campbell’s reflection interprets the red threads connecting the characters as the “thread of life,” it can also be interpreted as the strings controlling puppets, and it bears a striking visual similarity to the thread one might tie around a finger as a memory aid, perhaps symbolic of how Prospero’s memories of his lost kingdom tie him to an ongoing power struggle. Read Campbell’s reflection here.