Thursday, March 31, 2011
Macbeth 3/31/11
I find Macbeth interesting for one main reason, and that is that it is so easy to relate to the feelings expressed by the characters. For Macbeth, he knew what he was going to do was wrong, yet driven by greed and against his best judgement, he went on to kill the king and guards anyway. This is a common theme that appears in everyday life; though not on as large a scale, people are faced with scenarios where they do something that they know is morally wrong, yet out of greed they do it anyway and feel horrible about it afterwards. Lady Macbeth plays the role of the instigator, the one who is really pushing to do a bad thing out of greed, but doesn't wish to get her own hands dirty. And the list goes on. I don't think I would be nearly as interested in this play if it did not have this modern day connection.
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I think that I mentioned in class that we have to be careful of 'presentism' as we think about these characters. Even though everyone accepted the idea that it was wrong to kill the king as Macbeth did, Lady Macbeth was correct when she pointed out that many of the people in power had gotten that power by the same kinds of methods. The human race is interesting, and Macbeth points out that terrible things had been done in the past before laws were made to assure the common weal. Others have pointed out that we have laws and religion to protect us from our own 'id.' I will leave it to you to Google that term.
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