We explored gender roles and gender fluidity in the play. After defining the traditional gender roles of women , we explored how Lady Macbeth breaks gender roles by demanding the "spirits" to "Unsex" her and to replace her mother's milk with bile. By contrast, Macbeth remains plagued by the moral dilemma of regicide until his wife emasculates him for placing morality above power and ambition. We noted Macbeth's reference to behaving as a "man" as a motif in the play. We further located and parsed extended metaphors describing Macbeth's vaulting ambition in terms of a horse that jumps too high and falls thereby suggesting Macbeth's eventual moral and mortal downfall .
Joshua demonstrated impressive initiative by opening the class with an offer to share textual passages illustrating Macbeth as a proleptic character. We then discussed and analyzed the multiple examples of Shakespeare's use of extended metaphors. I further introduced the term"synecdoche" as a form of metaphor and identified its use in one of Macbeth's "asides". Last, we noted the ongoing motif of appearance vs reality.
We examined the paradoxes in Act I scenes I and II noting how the opening paradox of "fair is foul and foul is fair" acts as a foundational motif. I further introduced the nuance in the definition of hamartia explaining how the play's opening Act raises the question of whether "Macbeth" is a tragedy of character or a tragedy of fate or "chance". We discussed how the witches represent a malevolent force , a fact apparently recognized by Banquo, but not by Macbeth perhaps due to his latent aroused ambition. Last, I explored Macbeth as a proleptic character as evidenced by his focus on what could or might be as opposed to what is.
After we completed our study of literary terms such as paradox, soliloquy, pathetic fallacy, and iambic , I placed a genealogical sketch on the board tracing the lineage of James I, the king when Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, and discussed how the play not only includes witchcraft, a favorite topic of King James, but also legitimizes King James' rule over both England and Scotland. We then discussed the textual paradoxes in the first scenes as well as how Macbeth's bravery and savagery are conveyed to the audience .
For our introductory lesson on Shakespeare's "Macbeth" I discussed Aristotle's classic definitions of : tragedy, , hamartia, peripeteia, and catharsis. I further explored the two types of tragedy-the tragedy of character and the tragedy of fate. Last,I defined the literary device "pathetic fallacy". We read Act I scene I to illustrate an example of the "pathetic fallacy" and discussed the significance of the famous passage "fair is foul and foul is fair."
I assisted Joshua in formulating a conclusion for his first essay response . During the remainder of the session, Joshua completed the final test on the novel, a second essay .
We reviewed Joshua's homework on Steinbeck's use of imagery in the novel. We discussed how imagery enhances theme as when ,for example, Steinbeck uses figurative language to describe Lennie in terms of various large unthinking animals. In preparation for tomorrow's test, I further reviewed how the Edenic imagery mirrors a mythological America that has been corrupted by Man. Last, as an exercise on identifying imagery and its component figurative language, I distributed a portion of a short story by Steinbeck. Joshua did well in identifying the suffusive imagery in the passage.
As Joshua has completed reading the novel "Of Mice and Men" , today we studied the eponymous poem "To A Mouse" by Robert Burns. Joshua identified the poem's narrator and "plot" and discussed why Steinbeck titled the novel using a famous line from the poem"The best laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry." We focused on the similarities between the plight of the mouse in the poem and the novel's characters who also have "promised joy" destroyed by external deterministic forces leaving "only grief and pain." I further noted how Steinbeck's observations apply generally only to the condition of the underclasses in American society. As Joshua enjoys older English poetry, I then distributed another Burns poem, "Comin Through the Rye" and we analyzed how and why JD Salinger used lines and ideas from this poem in his famous novel"Catcher in the Rye."
We studied imagery and foreshadowing in today's session along with characterization. In this regard, we discussed how Curley's wife becomes a sympathetic figure who like Crooks, Lennie, George and Candy is frustrated with life and laments an unfulfilled dream. I distributed a letter written by John Steinbeck discussing his intent in creating this character. We then examined how Lennie's accidentally killing mice and then a puppy foreshadow his accidentally breaking Curley's wife's neck in the same manner. I then defined imagery and discussed how figurative language often creates imagery. I also distributed an exercise on identifying imagery in the novel which Joshua will complete for homework.
