April 25 Journal Entry

So, today after school I looked through some essay prompts and wrote two different essays to practice for the exam. It's what I struggle with the most- writing essays under pressure. One thing I did find is that I do much better if I take the time to do a pre-write before writing the essay. I never took the time to do one before because I was already stressed about having the time to write the essay on it's own. But, I took five minutes for the prewrite, and it helped me gather my thoughts, stay on topic, and I was able to get my ideas into the essay way quicker. I'm just starting to get better at writing essays of decent length in a specific amount of time, and now I need to work on writing quality essays, and to do that, I need to get out of the habit of just giving plot summaries. They warn you at the end of every prompt to avoid plot-summary, but I never seem to be able to provide enough textual evidence or examples of literary techniques in my essays. Personally, I think my inability to do that comes from my inability to analyze a piece of literature to begin with. I've never been good at it, and I'm not sure how to get better at it. -.-'

Open Essay Prompts Applicable to Macbeth.

• 1973
• An effective literarywork does not merely stop or cease; it concludes. In the view of some critics, a work that does not provide the pleasure of significant closure has terminated with an artistic fault. A satisfactory ending is not, however, always conclusive in every sense; significant closure may require to the reader to abide with or adjust to ambiguity and uncertainty. In an essay discuss the end of a novel or play of acknowledged literary merit. Explain precisely how and why the ending appropriately or inappropriately concludes the work. Do not merely summarize the plot.
• 1979
• Choose a complex and important character in a novel or a play of recognized literary merit who might, on the basis of the character's actions alone, be considered evil or immoral. In a well-organized essay, explain both how and why the full presentation of the character in the work makes us react more sympathetically than we otherwise might. Avoid plot summary.
• 1995
• Writers often highlight the values of a culture or a society by using characters who are alienated from that culture or society because of gender, race, class, or creed. Choose a play or novel in which such a character plays a significant role, and show how that character's alienation reveals the surrounding society's assumptions and moral values.

AP Exam Study Plan

Step 1) Memorize all lit terms by the end of this week.
Step 2) Do some practice essays over the weekend.
Step 3) Use next week to re-memorize vocab from last semester and take some practice tests.
Step 4) Use next weekend to practice analyzing poetry.

Hopefully, if I keep to this schedule, I'll be ready in perfect time for the big test.

Character Analysis: Macbeth vs. Lady Macbeth (a study tool)

Macbeth Lecture Notes Day Two

• Lady Macbeth
• determined, manipulative, animus, evil, pure force
• Macbeth can persevere through the guilt because he owns up to what he's done
• this makes him slightly more admirable
• Lady Macbeth can't admit to herself she's done anything wrong
• she's unaware that she feels guilt inside, and it destroys her from within
• the ultimate control freak, once she loses control of her husband, she reaches her breaking point and commits suicide.
• Their relationship in the beginning:
• Macbeth and wife are a real couple
• they love and support one another. they talk things out before doing anything
• after the murder, they start to move apart
• Macbeth is moving on and making decisions without his wife, determined to set his life in order again.
• all his worries are purely psychological
• no one suspects him yet he's paranoid.
• he's betrayed his value system and wants to forget so he won't have to feel guilty for what he's done.
• with each murder he commits, he believes he's doing something good, securing his position as king, but he's becoming more and more inhuman.
• he loses the ablitity to feel sensitive about life, and the link between himself and other human beings is severed.
• there's no longer any value to his life without someone to share it with
• his life has become empty (*see soliloquoy)
• he has everything but cares about nothing
• The Witches
• they remind us of the evil that secretly lies in everyone and drives us to do certain things
• they don't force Macbeth to do anything
• they give him the idea of being king and inform his own thinking
• Macbeth and his wife had already discussed him being king
• Macbeth was looking for something to give himn permission to do what he already had thought about doing
• they're pure evil, there to tempt and torment mankind.
• *Banquo
• he's important as a character because his reaction to the witches is in complete contrast with Macbeth's.
• he's happy for his children's destiny, but wouldn't want it if he had to do something he knew was awful.
• his honor was more important to him
• Macbeth listens, but doesn't care.
• he wants to believe the witches because he likes what they have to say more.
• possible possitive values in the witches???
• they are outcasts of society and women, completely excluded
• yet, they hold all the power in this story
• they are above the natural world
• a final thought:
• though Shakespeare doesn't specifically say, after Macbeth's death, the witches are still left to be dealt with, somewhere in the world. Almost as if to say that evil still exists in the world

Macbeth's "Tomorrow"

The audio is a little quiet, but I definitely know this!

Macbeth Retold Part Eight

Macbeth Retold Part Seven

Macbeth Retold Part Six

Macbeth Retold Part Five

Macbeth Retold Part Four

Macbeth Retold Part Three

Macbeth Retold Part Two

Macbeth Retold Part One

Macbeth vs. Hamlet (A study tool)

Just in case I'm ever asked to compare two pieces of Shakespeare...I'd like to have already come up with some ideas.

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.

Macbeth is Explained...

Today's Macbeth Test

1)Macbeth won the respect of King Duncan by:
             -slaying the traitor Macdonwald.

2)King Duncan rewarded Macbeth by dubbing him:
             -the Thane of Cawdor

3)In addressing Banquo, the witches called him:
             -lesser than Macbeth and greater, not as happy as Macbeth yet much happier, and a future father of kings.

4)When Macbeth said, "Two truths are told/As happy prologues" he was referring to:
            -his titles of Glamis and Cawdor

5)"Nothing in his life/Became him like the leaving it" is a reference to:
            -the traitorous Thane of Cawdor

6)Duncan's statement, "I have begun to plant thee and will thee labour/to make thee full of growing" is an example of:
             -a metaphor

7)Lady Macbeth characterizes her husband as being:
            -too full of the milk of human kindness

8)When Macbeth agonizes over the possible killing of the king, he says:
            -"He is my house guest; I should protect him", "Duncan's virtues will plead like angels", and "I am his kinsman and his subject."

9)Macbeth's statement to his wife, "Bring forth men-children only" signifies that he:
           -has accepted the challenge to kill the king

10)As part of the plan to kill the king, Lady Macbeth would:
           -get the chamberlains drunk

11)Trace Macbeth's transformation from a good man to an evil man.
           -There was a small, short-lived time where we got to see Macbeth as a good man. He fought bravely and fearlessly for the King, and he was greatly admired for his valor and merit. King Duncan calls him a "valiant cousin"and "a worthy gentleman", and he even gives Macbeth the title of Thane of Cawdor. That all changed quickly after his first murder, and he kept going out for more and more blood until he could feel safe that he'd be King for the rest of his natural life.

12)What motivates Macbeth to take the evil path he chooses?
            -Macbeth is motivated by his ambition and desire to be king, witch may have never even became apparent to him had the witches not told him his fortune. Not only would the idea of being king never have come into his head, but he may not have gone through with the murder if it hadn't bee for his wife's constant pushing and bullying him into it. Once he learned he would be king, he knew the only way to make his fortune come true would be t overthrow and kill King Duncan. Rather than be content with knowing that he would someday be king, as Banquo was glad to know his descendents would be kings, Macbeth had to do whatever he needed to get instant gratification.

13)What influences do the witches have on Macbeth?
           -The witches are the ones that put the idea of being king into Macbeth's head, and trick him into thinking he was greater than any man and that he couldn't be defeated.

14)Contrast Macbeth's response to the witches' predictions with Banquo's.
           -Macbeth was told by the witches that he would be Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and King. This created an ambition and desire in him that he hadn't had before, and he would stop at nothing to make his fortune come true. Banquo was told that while he was lesser than Macbeth, his descendents would go on to be Kings, and he was happy to let the chips fall where they may.

15)Describe the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Trace how it changes over the course of the play.
          -They start out as a lving couple, treating each other as equals. Macbeth is excited to tell his wife about the news of his fortunes, and she wants to help him achieve his destiny, and she helps plan the murder of the King. She was definitely the stronger of the two at first; more sure of what she wanted and how to get there. It was her constant bullying and harping on her husband that aided his decision to be more like her and act immediately upon his decisions. It ws when she was no longer needed by him that she was driven mad.

Part II

1)"Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible/ To feeling as to sight?" is a reference to the:
             -dagger

2)Lady Macbeth confessed that she would have killed King Duncan herself except for the fact that:
             -he looked like her father

3)Shakespeare introduced the Porter in order to:
             -provide comic relief

4)Malcolm and Donalbain flee after the murder:
             -because they fear the daggers in men's smiles

5)Macbeth arranges for Banquo's death by telling the hired killers that:
             -Banquo had thwarted their careers

6)Macbeth startles his dinner guests by:
              -conversing with the ghost of Banquo

7)The witches threw into the cauldron:
              -"eye of bat and tongue of frog" and "wool of bat and tongue of dog"

8)The three apparitions that appeared to Macbeth were:
              -an armed head, a child with a crown, and a bloody child.

9)In Act IV, Malcolm is at first lukewarm to Macduff because he:
              -suspects a trick

10)Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane when:
              -the camouflaged soldiers make their advance

11)What is the significance of the line, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair"?
              -the line lays out from the very beginning that things won't be as they seem to be, and it blurs the line between good and evil that Macbeth can't seem to distinguish.

12)How does Macbeth function as a morality play?
              -the story of Macbeth teaches people of the consequences of ill-gotten gains. It warns against doing something you know is wrong to get what you want in life. Macbeth murdered a good man to take something that didn't belong to him, and in the end he was brutally killed.

13)How does Shakespeare use the technique of Dramatic Irony in Macbeth?
              -we see a good example of dramatic irony in the last act of the play. Macbeth cannot see or refuses to believe that his reign as king is about to come to an abrupt end, and all the while we know what's coming.

14)How does Lady Macbeth overcome her husband's resistance to the idea of killing King Duncan?
               -Lady Macbeth is extremely determined, and she's not above insulting her husband, saying that he's less of a man for going back on his word after they had decided they would kill the king. She also knows her husband well enough to convince him of how easy the murder will be.

15)Contrast Macduff's response to the news of his wife's and children's deaths with Macbeth's response to being told Lady Macbeth is dead.
               -Macduff is a good man, and at first doesn't want to believe that his wife and children are dead. When he finally accepts what he is hearing, he feels pain. Macbeth, who has chosen a path of evil, is quick to accept the news of his wife's death, and it's almost like he doesn't care. He says that life is meaningless and that everyone dies eventually.

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five: The Remix

Macbeth Notes

• Written in 1605-1606
• twisted history
• intense, psychological, political, history, tragedy
• addressed political agenda of King James
• intertwined mythologies and realities
• (Raphael) Holinshed's Chroicles of Scottish History
• 11th century Scottland
• collection of gossip and tales
• flawed source of information behind Shakespeare's Macbeth.
• Shakespeare chose bits and pieces that made a good drama
• altered historical records
• referenced events occuring in England at the time in his play
• Gunpowder plot
• The historical Macbeth
• lived during the Dark Ages
• 1040: Macbeth becomes king
• overthrows and kills King Duncan
• rules for 17 years
• 1057: Duncan's son overthrows and kills Macbeth
• King Malcolm III
•  married English Princess (Saint) Margaret
• not much else is known about King Macbeth or his wife Grunnich

Top Three Lit Analysis Remixes

dania hetamleh, dhrhsenglitcomp.blogspot.com                                                                                 mari kagawa, mjkrhsenglitcomp.blogspot.com                                                                                         trenton class, tacrhsenglitcomp.blogspot.com