April 11, 2011

Macbeth Assignments for Final Package

1. Soliloquy Analyses – we will have a few that will be submitted at the end

2. Essay – Critical analysis of some major element of the play – ie You could guess something like “Macbeth is not insane, he is being manipulated and controlled by supernatural forces.” Or “Macbeth is not under the control of supernatural forces, he is responsible for his own actions and he has chosen to be evil.” Or “Macbeth is neither evil nor under the control of supernatural forces, he is insane and is therefore not responsible for his actions.”

Could also do something about “Female power and Macbeth”

“clothing imagery and motif in Macbeth”

“Inversion and the natural order in Macbeth”

What do you do in an essay like that?

Define the ideas, explain what they mean, show how they work in the play, and then explore the effects and the point of them.

Level 4 students are exploring the effects, considering what things mean and they are giving their own ideas and values into the essay – they’re adding possibilities – ie this could mean THAT – and THAT suggests this whole thing here –

This – could mean something specific from the play

THAT – could mean some BIG IDEA (power, authority, lust, greed, ambition, etc – human drives and needs and sins, etc)

This whole thing – deeper observations about human nature and our state of life

Begins keeping ESSAY notes NOW as we read the play

 

Lady Macbeth's Soliloquy

Act 1 Scene 5: 

The Raven Himself Is Hoarse

The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry 'Hold, hold!'