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DO NOW:

DO NOW:. Please take a handout from the front chair and take out your magazine and newspaper clippings that you were supposed to collect for homework. What is a theme?.

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DO NOW:

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  1. DO NOW: • Please take a handout from the front chair and take out your magazine and newspaper clippings that you were supposed to collect for homework.

  2. What is a theme? • A common thread or repeated idea that is incorporated throughout a literary work, usually involving some insight into human existence • Themes are often related to the author’s purpose in writing the literary work. • Theme differs from the subject or topic of a literary work in that it involves a statement or opinion about the topic

  3. Questions to help locate a theme • Does the text examine some common life experience or problem? • Does the text offer any solutions or answers to common problems? • How do the other elements in the story work together? What ideas or observations about life do they reveal?

  4. How is theme presented? • Often, stories suggest a theme through the details of: • Characters • Plot • Setting • Point of view • Themes of most literature have to do with emotions and experiences that make us human—fear, courage, loss, love, etc.

  5. Examples of theme • The Corrupting Power of Unchecked Ambition • The Relationship Between Cruelty and Masculinity • The Difference Between Kingship and Tyranny

  6. What is a motif? • recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes • A motif may be: • a literary element used repeatedly in one text • two contrasting elements in a work (good and evil) • a literary element used over time in various texts, providing a useful example of a cultural "constant"

  7. Why use a motif? • it allows us to see main points and themes that the author is trying to express, in order that we might be able to interpret the work more accurately

  8. Examples of motif • Hallucinations • Violence • Prophecy • Sleep and Sleeplessness • Nature • Blood • Equivocation • Clothing

  9. Supernatural Motifs in Macbeth Fair and Foul Light and Dark Sleep =Equivocation= Blood Nature and Unnatural Sight and Blindness Clothing

  10. Fair and Foul • This motif is a paradox! • How can something be fair (good) and foul (bad) at the same time? As the play begins: • the weather is foul but the day has brought success to Macbeth. • Macbeth is a hero but his ambition will be his downfall; • the battle has been won but life has been lost.

  11. Blood • This motif begins with the entrance of the “bloody man,” the captain who tells of Macbeth’s bravery in Act I, Scene 2. • It continues as Macbeth sees the dagger, at the death of Duncan, and throughout the play as several characters are killed. • The idea that the blood of a murder cannot be washed from the hands is evident in both Macbeth’s and Lady Macbeth’s speeches.

  12. Light and Dark • Darkness is the prevalent atmosphere in the entire play. • Almost all the scenes take place at night or in a dark place. • Macbeth charges the stars to “hide [their] fires” so his murderous thoughts will be hidden. • Lady Macbeth calls on night to come “palled in the dunnest smoke of hell.”

  13. =Equivocation= • This theme is closely related to the "Fair and Foul" theme, because to equivocate is to lie by saying something that sounds fair, but which has a hidden, foul meaning.

  14. Sight and Blindness • Like Oedipus, Macbeth cannot see his own downfall in the making. • He also tries to hide his crimes even from himself. • Macbeth sees the dagger that is not really there. • Lady Macbeth sees the “damned spot” that will not wash away.

  15. Nature and Unnatural • Nature and Unnatural – “nature” refers to human nature. • the entire play is about Macbeth’s unnaturalness. • It is unnatural, as well, for Lady Macbeth, a woman, to be considering murder. • Nature is disturbed when Duncan is murdered. • Unnatural night occurs the day after Duncan’s death • Nature also plays a part when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane.

  16. Clothing • Clothing is a metaphor for identity in several scenes. • Macbeth refuses to believe his new title and first introduces the metaphor in Act I, scene 3 where he calls his title “borrowed robes.” Banquo also refers to Macbeth’s title as “strange garments.” • Macduff refers to Macbeth’s kingship when he says that “old robes sit easier than the new.” • Near the end of the play, Angus refers to Macbeth’s kingship as a garment that “hangs loose about him, like a giant’s robe.”

  17. Supernatural • Shakespeare incorporates the supernatural throughout the play: • the first scene where the witches appear • the next appearance and sudden disappearance of the witches • the dagger that appears to Macbeth seems to be of supernatural origin • the use of camouflage in the final act contrasts the supernatural happenings in the rest of the play

  18. Sleep • Sleep is one of the foremost motifs in the play: • Duncan and servants are asleep when the crimes are committed. • Macbeth’s guilt makes him hear “Macbeth has murdered sleep.” • In III, 6, 34 the lord speaks of Scotland itself not sleeping until Macbeth is taken out. • Lady Macbeth cannot sleep. She sleepwalks and dreams of the evil things she and Macbeth have done. • Malcolm refers to sleep when he mentions that after Macbeth’s defeat, the “chambers will be safe.”

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