Gonzalo: The Optimist Who Survives Everyone Else's Cynicism
First appears: Act 1, Scene 1
Gonzalo is the only person on the ship in Act 1, Scene 1 trying to stay calm and help. Everyone else is shouting at the sailors or panicking. His goodwill achieves nothing (the storm ignores it) but it establishes him as the play's moral centre before the main action has even started.
On the island in Act 2, Scene 1, he describes an imagined commonwealth: a place without government, commerce, or toil, where nature provides everything freely. Antonio and Sebastian mock him throughout the speech with acid comments from the side. He is cheerful, undeterred, and completely immune to their contempt.
He is the one who names what has happened in Act 5. Where Antonio and Sebastian are silent and Alonso is overwhelmed, Gonzalo speaks, connecting everything that was lost and found again, seeing the shape of the whole story. He was always the most grateful person in the room, and the ending belongs to him.
Key Scenes
Famous Quotes
“Here is everything advantageous to life.”
Gonzalo — Act 2, Scene 1
“O, rejoice beyond a common joy, and set it down with gold on lasting pillars.”
Gonzalo — Act 5, Scene 1
Themes
Other Characters in The Tempest
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