MacBeth Reading Journal: Act One

Prior Points:

• MacBeth is the eponymous prontagonist.
• The play is modeled on a Greek Tragedy ("A play in which the protagonist, usually a man of importance and outstanding personal qualities, falls to disaster through the combination of a personal failing and circumstances with which he cannot deal" http://www.collinsdictionary.com)
• In the character list, powerful characters are separatred from non-powerful ones, for example, King Duncan and his Thanes have a space between them and the less powerful men, who, in turn, have a space between them and the women of the tale. 
• The main female character, Lady MacBeth, is not given a first name and is known by her husband's last name
• Motifs -Supernatural-Morality with moral dilemas-Violence. MacBeth is violent.
• "A great man can be brought down by one play on his deepest  desires"
• The settings are always dark

Scene One:

• The play starts with a question
• The three witches use call and responce in iambic pentametre while rhyming- eg "again" and "rain" 

Scene Two: 

• Starts In Medias Res, in the middle of a battle.
• "What bloody man is that?" opens with a question, just like the first act.
• MacBeth is first meantioned with the adjective "Brave" before his name
• MacBeth is in the thick of the action, fighting over a corner of Scotland. "Distaining fortune" MacBeth didn't care for his safety.
• MacBeth "unseamed" (cut in half) MacDonwald before chopping off his head and sticking it on the battlements. This shows that MacBeth can be ruthless.
• King Duncan praises MacBeth-24
• "MacBeth and Banquo were like cannons overcharged with double cracks"
• There are two battle-fronts, one against MacDonwald's army and one against the King of Norway. The Thane of Cawdor turns traitor to the King of Norway.
• The Disloyal Thane of Cawdor is put to death and the title goes to MacBeth.

Scene Three:

•  45 - The Weird Sisters are bearded (Weird meaning "a person’s destiny" oxforddictionaries.com in archaic Scotish)
•  49 - "All hail MacBeth, that shalt be king hereafter" A self fulfilling prophercy. This unlocks a reppressed desire of MacBeth. The witches use manipulation
• 81 - Supernatural. The witches melt!
• MacBeth becomes Thane of Cawdor and starts to believe that he will become king as well
• 130 - MacBeth questioning what the weird sisters say
• 134 - MacBeth is SCARED by what the witches say, despite his fearlessness in battle
• 138 - Murder is first meantioned by MacBeth

Scene Four:

• Starts with a question, like scenes one and two
• 15 - The King admits to trusting the wrong people. Enter MacBeth.
•  49 - MacBeth now wants to be King. Not in a questioning manner as in line 126 of Act One Scene Three. There are more obsticles to becoming King than Duncan. Buys into the Weird Sister's prophersy. An obsession. It's the first time that MacBeth goes a bit wrong. "Let not light see my black and deep desires" - 52. Does he have Post Traumatic Stress Dissorder after the battle? Changing from a battle hero back into a normal life must be hard, so he is probably not thinking rationally. Is what he's thinking a simple fantasy?

Scene Five:

•  1 - Lady MacBeth reads from a letter from MacBeth. There is nothing about the battle and nothing about how MacBeth is. It is all about the witches and what they said. Shows MacBeth's obsession. He could have waited until his homecoming but he has to tell her as soon as possible. Why would MacBeth send his wife the letter, she might think that he was going mad. Descriptive language is used in the letter. Florrid language, for example "I burned in desire to question them further" - 3
• 13 -  "Glamis thou art, and Cawdor and shalt be what thou art promised" (Thanes of Glamis and Cawdor)
• 14 - "Yet do I fear thy nature: It is too full o' the milk of human kindness" says Lady MacBeth. You can't be king because you're too kind. HOWEVER, we know how how violent MacBeth is. He "unzipped" someone, remember...
• 16 - "Thou wouldst be great, art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it" said Lady MacBeth. Ambitious but without a mean streak needed to get to nthe top. "That I may pour my spirits into thine ear" - 24. I will give MacBeth my mean streak.
•  37 - "The fatal entrance of Duncan" Lady MacBeth has decided in one page to commit regicide.
• 39 - "Unsex me here and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty" She wants to be a ruthless, coldblooded murderer. Asking the "spirits that tend on mortal thoughts". Speach patterns are like them of the witches.
• 42 - "Stop up the access and passage to remorse" Lady MacBeth. Take away what it means to be human.
• 46 - "Take my milk for gall" the "milk of human kindness" is turned to poison.
• When MacBeth returns to his wife, he is greated by "great Glamis, worthy Cawdor" His titles. No hugs, no niceties. This suggests that Lady MacBeth only values MacBeth for his titles!
• 59 - "O never shall sun that morrow see" Lady MacBeth about King Duncan.
• 60 -  "Your face, my thane, is as a book where men may read strange matters" MacBeth is worried
•  71 - "Leave all the rest to me" Says Lady MacBeth. Meaning preparation for murder, but not the actual muder itself.

Scene Six:

• 1 - "This castle hath a pleasent seat" King Duncan. Dramatic irony, as the audience knows at this point that he will meet his demise within those walls.
• 14 - The King praises Lady MacBeth
• Lady MacBeth is two-faced. She is nice to the king, but we know that she will have him mudered.

Scene Seven:

• MacBeth's Soliloquy, we see his true feelings. Questions whether he should really kill Duncan. WHY DOES MACBETH HAVE TO BE KING RIGHT NOW? WHY DOES HE HAVE TO COMMIT MURDER IF THE WITCHES SAY HE'LL BE KING ANYWAY?
• 31 - "We will proceed no further in this business" MacBeth says that he will not kill Duncan
• 43 - Lady MacBeth calls MacBeth a "coward" despite his war heroics
• 46 - "I dare do all that may become a man" MacBeth saying he's not a coward
• 48 - Lady MacBeth "What beast was't then that made you break this enterprise to me?" She blames MacBeth for telling her what the witches said.
•  55 - A refference to a dead child of Lady MacBeth psychologically disturbed.
• 60 - Lady MacBeth makes the plan. Cawdor turned traitor, so why not the bodyguards, FOOLPROOF.
• 79 - "I am settled" MacBeth will do the deed?

How far do you agree that both novels are about the psychological effects of war? A 200 word essay on Slaughterhouse-five and Regeneration

Neither the structure of Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut nor Regeneration by Pat Barker are linear in structure. Slaughterhouse-Five is cyclical in structure while Regeneration is peppered with flashbacks. The significance of this is that both novel's structures mirror the complexities of the effects that war has on the characters. Neither the main character of Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim, or the main character of Regeneration, Siegfried Sassoon, suffer any serious physical injuries in their time at war, in fact, the only injury that Billy Pilgrim sustains in the war is from a pair of "low cut civilian shoes he had brought for his father's funeral" which gives him a "sore hip". The psychological effects of the war on both Billy and Siegfried are formidable. Billy is hidden in an underground meat storing facility while an entire city full of civilians is firebombed to the ground by his own people while Sigfried can still recall the "charred and blackened" corpses on the battlefield of the First World War and he wrote poetry about watching his friends dieing. In this respect, both novels are certainly about the psychological effects of war on the individuals that experience it as we will find out in the full essay...

A Short Marxist analysis of Slaughterhouse 5

In Kurt Vonnegut's famous anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse 5, three simple words are repeated throughout the book that almost perectly sum up the storyline: "So it goes". This is always said by the narrator after death is mentioned. A Marxist would say that this phrase adequately sums up the lack of power any character has over their own fate and c'est la vie. This links nicely to the Tralfamadorians, a race of aliens (whether they are real or imagined by Billy Pilgrim is never important) who can see the fourth dimention, time, and therefore know how the universe began and how it will end. They also know that they are powerless to change anything as all of time has already happened, will always happen and is always happening. When they see a dead fellow tralfamador, they don't feel sad, as they know that it is still alive in another time. So it goes.

The second title of Slaughterhouse-Five is "The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death" and throughout the novel, the narrator is constantly correcting himself when soldiers and men are mentioned, instead calling them children. An example of this is used when describing a dying, mad colonel  “This was a man who had lost an entire regiment, about forty-five hundred men—a lot of them children, actually”(being a colonel who was incompitant enough to lead 4500 children to their deaths, it seems unlikely that he was promoted for being a good tactition and so it seems likely that he would have bought his way to the upper echelons of the army. A dig at the upper classes?) This is significant in that children do not have power in society and so Vonnegut attempts to show us that soldiers weren't all gallant young me who wanted to fight for peace and their country, they were lambs sent to slaughter. The Slaughterhouse-five in the title might not just be Billy's prison in Dresden, but also a description of the war. A slaughterhouse.

Finally, the name of the main character is Billy Pilgrim. Not William or Will or Bill, but Billy. How many adults do you know who call themselves "Billy"? It is a childish name for a child and as we know, children lack the power to change their fate. So it goes...