If anything, the Prospero of A Tempest is even less sympathetic than Shakespeare's Prospero from The Tempest. That's because Césaire's take on the original is explicitly allegorical, a work of postcolonial drama that uses the source material to construct a powerful critique of the Western colonial project.

Given Césaire's dramatic aims, there's really no place for subtle characterization. And so Prospero is a fairly one-dimensional bad guy, a racist white colonialist who lords it over Ariel, a mulatto (or mixed-race person), and Caliban, a black slave. Prospero is violently intolerant of any expression of indigenous culture—the very culture he's worked so hard to repress—that he refuses to allow Caliban to speak in his native language.

Prospero has so much contempt for Ariel and Caliban that he refuses to leave the island, fearing that the place will descend into outright anarchy as soon as he sets sail for Naples. Prospero's attitude matches that of Western colonialists, who held fast to the racist belief that Indigenous people were incapable of running their own affairs and needed the firm hand of the white man to maintain order and stability. The assumption behind Prospero's decision to stay put is as arrogant as it is patronizing.