Ex de Text Essay Example

Ex de Text Essay Example Ex de Text Essay Ex de Text Essay Explication De Texte I. Subject This play, Macbeth, written by Shakespeare, is set in Scotland in the Middle Ages. Power plays a great role throughout this tale. Macbeth is the tragic hero in the story and is the main character and also has a need for power. Macbeth started out as a general, fighting in the war, but then became thane of Cawdor. That was the start of his downfall. Macbeth plots to kill the king, Duncan, so he can be next in line to fulfill the prophecy. His wife, Lady Macbeth, is the one devises him about the plan. He was unsure at first but he goes against his gut feeling and chooses to murder the king. This is when his lust for power begins. Macbeth is then named king and murders people when he feels or is scared by them. He then hires men to kill Banquo, another warrior, because he is scared of him. Macbeth then chooses to kill Macduffs family because he was afraid of losing his power to them. Meanwhile all the people are becoming terrified of Macbeth because he is murdering anyone in his way, and armies are formed to overthrow him. The armies come into the castle and he then gets into a sword fight with Macduff who beheads him. He then loses the one thing he always worked for, power. Sheridan 2 II. Theme The overall theme in Macbeth is: fair is foul and foul is fair. This statement, fair is foul and foul is fair, is started by the witches in the first scene of the play. The statement is fairly easy to understand, whatever appears to be foul is fair and if it appears fair it is most likely foul. They were telling Macbeth a prophecy that he would will be Thane of Cawdor, Macbeth will become King, and Banquos children will be kings. Macbeth chooses to believe the prophecy and was working to fulfill it for the rest of the book. He also looks like the great war hero who becomes a thane and king, but in the end he is just a murderer. The theme is periodically, even including his death. Macbeth chooses to mock the saying by describing the weather by saying this, So foul and fair a day I have not seen. . He then murders Duncan while he is asleep. Lady Macbeth and Macbeth then have a hard time sleeping. This is because of two things; sleep is only for the good and a clean conscious, also it is following the theme. They lost their sleep because they were foul and it is fair for them to lose the peace of mind. Lady Macbeth comes up with the plan to murder the King. Macbeth is a little unsure of the plan but Lady Macbeth shames him enough that he ends up doing it. Lady Macbeth, who came up with the plan, becomes very guilty and sleepwalks and kills herself. But Macbeth, who was originally very skeptical of the plan, the kills many more people and feels nothing of it. In the end, Macbeth was killed by Macduff. He was very mean and murdered many people. He looked at one point to be a hero but was feared by others at his death. It looked foul when he was murdered but was very fair in the end. Diction Sheridan 3 Diction can be defined as the manner in which something is expressed in words. Shakespeare uses diction throughout the entire play of Macbeth. He chose his vocabulary and his words very carefully. He had many kinds of sentence styles, dialects and foreign languages. In Macbeth, Shakespeare decided use with a dialogue type of play. In many ways he would use dialogue to help start the scenes. The dialogue kept the flow of the plot moving very well because when the people are just talking to one another it keeps the flow moving. I believe this is because they Shakespeare is then not to focused on the 3rd person point of view or the thoughts of someone. The sentence style in Macbeth varies greatly. Shakespeare changes from long and involved sentences to short simple ones. This all depended on the type of scene and how tragic it was going to be. For example uses iambic pentameter when important or tragic scenes are place. So obviously the sentence style would contribute to the mood greatly. Whenever there is rhyming or a poetic type of sentence it usually means something meaningful was going to happen in the near future. In Macbeth, they used a different dialect than what we do today. A few of the people in the story would speak a little more civilized and proper; Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, King Duncan. These people were very high in social class maybe they had to speak like this to stay up high. Diction was very important to uphold the subject and theme. The subject of this book is power, power can be shown through diction. The way Shakespeare chooses his words lets him show how much power Macbeth really had. I also think if this were a narrative type of book then it would have been harder to show the true power of Macbeth and all his rage. The theme of the play is fair is foul and foul is fair. This can also be shown very well through dialogue. The dialogue can help the reader realize that what looked good was foul and what looked bad was actually fair. Sheridan 4 IV. Tone In Macbeth there are two tones throughout, the first one is fateful. This mood is started from the first act when Macbeth meets the three witches. He was given a prophecy by them. He was told he he will be Thane of Cawdor, Macbeth will become King, and Banquos children will be kings. Macbeth attempts to take fate into his own hands, after being named Thane, by killing Duncan. He then also killed Banquoes family because he was afraid of them taking over. In the end, the true fate was after all Macbeth did to try and fulfill the prophecies he ended up being murdered. The second one is bloodshed. Macbeth first kills Duncan so he can fulfill the prophecy and become the king. He then kills the two guards that were supposed to be guarding the King. He then kills Banquo. He even orders people to kill Lady Macduff and her children. At the end he kills young Siward. Macbeth was then murdered by Macduff. There were many people murdered throughout the whole story which caused it to be a major mood. People were always thinking or talking about it. Many times throughout people were plotting murders too. V. Symbol Shakespeare uses many symbols in the story Macbeth. For example, sleep is only for the innocent. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were effected by losing sleep. When Macbeth killed the king, he told his wife that he heard a voice telling him he murdered sleep. This meant he wouldn’t be at peace of mind. Lady Macbeth then starts sleepwalking, she talks about all the blood on her hands and keeps trying to wash them off on a clothe. She felt so guilty about all the murders and wrongdoings that she did, that she took her own life. The saying â€Å"sleep on it† comes from Shakespeare, this means to think about a decision overnight. But Macbeth and Lady Macbeth lost their chance to sleep when they killed Duncan. Sheridan 5 VI. Speaker In Macbeth, Shakespeare decided to use an objective or dramatic point of view. All the characters help explain the plot of the story. The speaker is unnamed and uninvolved. Using this method, the play is like watching a movie. There is no narrator in this type of speaker but you do get help from the side notes in the book. The characters also give lots of soliloquies. VII. Structure Internal- In Macbeth, the author chose to use logical order. There are no flashbacks in Macbeth but there are many dreams and hallucinations. This play was located in Scotland and a little bit in England. The play took place during the Middle Ages. External- The version of Macbeth that we read was in a school textbook, the Elements of Literature 6th Edition. The play including the extra pages throughout is a total of 90 pages. There are side notes or text aids to help the reader think about certain lines or help them with vocab. VIII. Imagery metaphor: (mac 2. 4. 9-10) â€Å"that darkness does the face of earth entomb, when living light should kiss it? † similes: (mac 1. . 15) â€Å"and fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling, showed like a rebels whore† antithesis: (mac 1. 1. 10) â€Å"fair is foul, and foul is fair† personification: (mac 2. 1. 3) â€Å"and she goes down at twelve† the she he is talking Sheridan 6 about is the moon. Verbal irony: (mac 3. 1. 14-15) â€Å"tonight we hold a solemn supper, sir and Ill request your presence† irony of situation: (mac 4. 1. 80 and 92-93) â€Å"the powr of man, for none of woman born/ Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill† oxymoron: (mac 2. . 42) â€Å"I know this is a joyful trouble to you† onomatopoeia: (mac 2. 3. 6) â€Å"knock knock knock† alliteration: (mac 4. 1. 79) â€Å"be bloody, bold, and resolute† dramatic irony: (mac 1. 3) Macbeth being named Thane. Audience knew the last Thane was killed due to treason but Macbeth didnt know at the time. IX. Genre Tragedy is a literary work depicting serious events in which the main character, who is often high- ranking and dignified, come to an unhappy end. So in other words, a tragedy is when the main character is brought down by his tragic flaw. The witches in the story brought out the worst in Macbeth by putting the prophecies in his mind and letting him think that he couldnt be killed and that he would be king. Macbeths tragic flaw was greed for power. He always wanted more and wanted to be king. He murdered many people he feared or if they were in his way. Macbeth was a hero in the beginning because he was a war hero and helped take down the enemy. But he turned out to be a traitor and a murderer. Sheridan 7 Bibliography: Shakespeare, William. â€Å"Macbeth† Trans. Elements of Literature, Six Course. Literature of Britain with World classes. Austin: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 2003.