Chester’s Online Journal

In this passage, Shakespeare uses many different techniques to present Macbeth’s deteriorating state of mind. The semantics of the speech is that Lady Macbeth has died and Macbeth is questioning the point of living at the present moment. The “moment” being an army of 10,000 English men and an army of traitors outside his castle.

One way Shakespeare portrays Macbeth’s insanity is through iambic pentameter, or the lack of it… The first line: “She should have died hereafter” is not accompanied by iambic pentameter. Throughout most of the play Macbeth and other upper class characters speak in iambic pentameter. Throughout the start of the play Macbeth is sane and morally boring. Now, his wife is dead, all his friends have turned against him, and he is losing his sanity. Shakespeare shows Macbeth has changed for the worse by stopping him from speaking in rhythm. He is no longer a respectable nobleman, but a frail and unstable man.

Another way Shakespeare presents Macbeth’s deteriorating state of mind is through the metaphors he speaks. “Life’s but a walking shadow.” A shadow has nearly no usefulness, unless you want to take shelter from the sun. This has two meanings to it. One of them is that life is that life is pointless. People just drift around like shadows and eventually they die. There is a recurring theme of hiding from God in Macbeth, so that his “good actions are hidden from him; God is always portrayed as being in the sky, but is hidden by darkness. Now, God is the sun, huge and bright and powerful, and Macbeth has nowhere to hide anymore, except in his own fragmented mind which is a shadow of what it used to be.

One other metaphor Macbeth uses is “all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Macbeth describes life as “yesterdays”, which have done nothing but lead us to our death. He then says “Out, out, brief candle!”. By this, he means that he wants to die. He has given up on life as he has nothing worth living for: his wife has died, he has no allies.

Shakespeare uses suspension of disbelief to show Macbeth’s insanity. The audience would have been choosing to believe that the performance they were seeing was real. That the actors were real, that the props were real etc. When Macbeth says “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more”, he acknowledges the fact that he is only an actor on a stage, entertaining people. In this sense, Shakespeare suspends the audiences disbelief so that they feel even more strongly that Macbeth is losing his mind, as he is no longer speaking about the play, but the whole world.

In this passage, Macbeth is saying that Lady Macbeth shouldn’t have died. He condemns her for dying at the wrong time.

Lady Macbeth has just died and an army is outside his castle.

One metaphor Shakespear uses to demonstrate Macbeth’s conflict is “Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going, and such an instrument I was to use”. Here, Macbeth is referring to the knife he can see in his hand. A Marshall was a person of high hierarchy in a medieval household, so when he says it “marshall’st” him, he means it’s pushing him with authority towards the killing of King Duncan.

Another metaphor Macbeth uses is “Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat oppressed brain?”. Macbeth is wondering wether the dagger in his hand is but an illusion, a hallucination created in the turmoil of his “heat oppressed” mind. Macbeth could be hoping that this is the case and that it is a figment of his imagination, therefore leading him to believe that he doesn’t have to kill Duncan. The fact that Macbeth describes his brain as “heat oppressed” shows how much pressure he is under, and how he is conflicting with himself. His wife is urging him to commit treason, while he himself, an honourable man, has to fight with his said honour and the prospect of immeasurable riches and the power that comes with the murder of a friend.

“The Prince of Cumberland: that is a step on which I must fall down, or else o’erleap, for in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires, the eye wink at the hand. Yet let that be, which the eye fears when it is done to see.”

The Prince of Cumberland is the kings son, who is the heir to the throne. When Macbeth says he needs to fall down on it or overleap, he means that Malcolm (the heir) is in his way to the throne and Macbeth is probably going to kill him. The next sentence is a metaphor. The stars represent heaven and god. Macbeth doesn’t want God to see his “Black and deep desires”. This proves that he wants to kill the king and his son, because he doesn’t want god to judge him. The fact that Macbeth says black and deep desires, shows that he realises what he wants is wrong. It also shows that Macbeth is quarrelling with himself wether he should go ahead and fulfill the witches prophecy. This is enforced when Macbeth says that his eye winks at his hand. He is trying to persuade his body to partake in the action of treason. The last sentence though, suggests that Macbeth fears

You park up beside a dozen cars. Families unpack the boots of their vehicles and laden with luggage, walk towards the bay. As you go round the giant hedge, you are greeted by the blinding sun in the clear blue sky. Its beams bounce off the pleasant sea and onto its surroundings. Up ahead, children jump off the wooden jetty into the water, a meter down, gasping as they resurface. The many colors of their swimsuits and swimming trunks stand out against the grey stone in the surrounding area and blue sea. Closer inland, parents lounge on the rocks, soaking up the suns magnificent light. The small, traditional, red Scandinavian house is actually a kiosk. A line of people make up the queue between the white posts on its brown wooden porch. You walk twenty yards over the warm, smooth rock. The heat from the sun deep within it feels good against the bottoms of your feet. After waiting for a minute in the queue, you order your ice cream, and the sweetness is a such a strong contrast to the smell of the salty ocean. However, today the sea is calm. The kids fishing for crabs use the weather to their advantage. The poor crabs are fished and then released back into their dark home over and over and over again. You walk over to the jetty and pick up a cheap fishing rod. The children by your side take the fishing very seriously and frantically scramble around you calling for the net. You finish and step onto the rough rock and hop towards the natural ramp. The crabs climb over each other as you tip the bucket. You

You turn the corner and are greeted with the shining ocean. The sun shines in the cloudless sky and people lounge in its warm light. Children shout in joy as they jump into the refreshing water, and gasp as they propel themselves back out of the sea. Parents and adults who aren’t parents lay on the coarse, round rock, and feel the heat deep within, taken from the sun. The typical Scandinavian red house, is a kiosk. The thought of

Immediately removed from his present sphere of life and from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman,—in a word, as a young fellow of great expectations.”

“You are part of my existence, part of myself.”

“Crush his head with this poker like the claw of a lobster”

Pips convict says that when he first saw Compeyson, his former comrade, he would crush his head. This suggests that he is a violent man. However, there are connotations in this quotation too. When you think of a lobster, you think of something without feelings. This makes you think that Magwitch can kill people without hesitation. The denotation indicates that Magwitch is violent, but the connotation shows you how his mind works.

There are many advantages and disadvantages of staying or leaving the EU. One advantage to staying is the fact that we many of our trade routes are with the