10R Research Paper

Here is a link to citing Shakespeare.

From Amanda R's outline. (Thank you, Amanda!)

Title: Conscience: Friend or Foe?

Thesis: Shakespeare uses characterization, symbolism, and internal conflict to portray how Macbeth 's quick, clear loss of conscience causes him to thrive on a feeling or immortality that will later turn to deceive him in the end. (NC)

Better: Shakespeare uses characterization, symbolism, and internal conflict to portray how Macbeth loses his conscience to his thirst for power, which will continue to deceive him and ultimately destroy him in the end.

1st body paragraph:

Main idea: Shakespeare begins his play using characterization about how strongly Macbeth's conscience influences his life and well-being. (NC)

Better: Shakespeare begins his play by using characterization to establish Macbeth’s credentials as a heroic soldier.

Question: Does the evidence below support this idea?

New topic sentence: Even after the murder, Macbeth’s conscience

Evidence:

MACBETH

(looking at his hands) This is a sorry sight. (II. ii. 20)

MACBETH

One cried, “God bless us!” and “Amen” the other,

As they had seen me with these hangman’s hands.

List'ning their fear I could not say “Amen,”

When they did say “God bless us!” (II. ii. 27-29)

MACBETH

“Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor

Shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more.” (II. ii 43-44)

Analysis:

"But Macbeth's conscience works immediately and expansively in the moments after the murder, dominating his thoughts and the drama of Act 2. Immediately after the murder, Macbeth experiences conscience as a chamber of sights and sounds, with each signifier potentially, but incompletely, representing that witness who will communicate his guilt. Macbeth kills his liege in the second act, between the first and second scenes, and his entrance in Scene 2 shows us Macbeth in the first throes of conscience. In his first words he is startled, and worries that someone is out there: "Who's there? What ho?" (2.2.8). And then, "I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?" (2.2.14). Macbeth goes from the deed right to the sense that there is a person or a noise within a communicable distance." - Abraham Stoll, Conscience in Macbeth

Thesis: Using the setting of Scotland and the characterizations of Macbeth, Duncan and Banquo, Shakespeare shows that when power is separated from common decency, all hell, literally, breaks loose.

BP1

Early in the play, Shakespeare establishes the world of Macbeth as inhabited by an anthropomorphic evil, eager to influence, and ultimately destroy, the human world. In the first scene, the Second Witch says that they will meet again when, "the hurlyburly's done, when the battle's lost and won." (I.i.3-4) The battle the witch refers to is presumably the battle for Macbeth's soul. In an inverted world where "foul is fair and fair is foul" (I.i.10), the success of the Weird Sisters is the destruction of Macbeth. Although we first meet Macbeth as a hero, a soldier who is "impervious to fear when merely natural foes confront him..." (LaBlanc 159), we soon see that he is not immune to the insidious suggestions of the three hags. The words of the Three Witches soon grow in Macbeth's mind, eventually infecting his imagination.

(I.i, I.iii)

BP2

Common decency and virtue are symbolized by the characters of Duncan and Banquo. Banquo establishes his virtue when he tells Macbeth, "that the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray's in deepest consequence." Banquo is naturally cautious of the Witches' prophecies and understands that they cannot lead to a good end.