Thursday, April 19, 2012

Macbeth Lecture Notes (Day One)

The Murder of the King
  • Rise and fall of a good man.
  • Act III- he becomes king
    • rest of play is focused on the downfall
    • his flaw is his ambition
    • tragic because he started with so much potential
    • he can't be happy with what he has after the witches tell him his future.
    • the witches gave the suggestion, but made him do nothing.
    • Macbeth and wife had discussed becoming king before.
      • witches maybe response to a desire already there?
    • Macbeth constantly changing his mind
    • always weighing pros and cons of his actions
    • he KNOWS right from wrong, but chooses to do wrong
      • he'd be a full villain, if it weren't for his conscience.
      • he suffers inside for the rest of the play after Duncan's murder.
    • definition of tragic hero- reinforce values of society
      • Macbeth fails royally at this
      • he ends up alone, no friends, no wife, and hated by everyone
    • doesn't want to kill king, but can't stop invisioning himself as king
      • Lady Macbeth has no problem pushing her husband to murder Duncan
      • she has no conscience. the embodiment of Evil
      • Animus= masculine (not male)
      • Anima= feminine (not female)
      • Lady Macbeth is Animus
    • the hallucination of the Knife as Macbeth is getting ready to murder Duncan
      • he's psyching himself out, and the more he thinks about it, the more he doesn't want to do it.
      • he can see his goal, so close to being king, but he can't bring himself to do it.



Macbeth as King
  • he's dealing with guilt for the rest of the play.
  • he's overcome with fear and paranoia.
    • the courage he has is an outer one. he's not afraid to fight.
    • starts making more bad decisions
      • possibly a conscious decision?
      • self-destructive behavior makes the ending pretty much inevitable
      • maybe he thought it's what he desserved? who knows...
  • Lady Macbeth handles the guilt differently
    • she can't handle the torment inside.
    • the one time she embodies stereotypical female=being fickle
    • the sleepwalking is a metaphor
      • "being there, but not being there"
      • she's trying to wash the blood from her hands in her sleep
      • confessing her sins
      • a residual haunting on repeat in her mind
      • reliving her crimes in her nightmares
      • she feels guilty, but isn't aware of it, and therefore doesn't know how to deal with it
      • unable to deal with the guilt she feels, she commits suicide.

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