Annotated Bibliography

Herrera, Maria. "Anti-violence March Held West of Lantana: Sheriff's Office and Residents March with
a Message." Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL) [Fort Lauderdale, FL] 27 Apr. 2008. Newspaper
Source. EBSCO. Pascack Hills HS Lib., Montvale NJ. 29 Apr. 2008
. The Haitian Police Force wants to work with the community
to help end violence; however, the community is generally not willing to work with them. The
Police Force feels that people who are committing the violence are not going to be seen helping
to stop it, but the majority of the community will be willing to make some changes to their
lives to help stop violence and help better their children's education. The author of this
article is not effected by the violence, so she does not have the motivation to help get the
word out. She seemed biased; she did not give a lot of information. I would have lived to have
read more of the community's response instead of how the Police Force is planning to execute
their new plan. This article offers a good insight to the topic if you have never heard of it
previously, but it is not enough to get the full picture.

Guilt

Guilt has played a major role in both everyday life and in Macbeth. In recent news, Professional Baseball Trainer Brian McNamee’s guilt caught up with him. He is a trainer to many of the major stars of Major League Baseball. He encouraged them to use steroids in order to improve their games. The guilt from his wrong doings has lived within him for years. It has finally caught up with him. After all those years, he finally admitted to what he did. He started to share which players he encouraged to take steroids. These players are being investigated.
Guilt has also affected my life. A couple of years ago, I was in a quarrel with my brother and I slammed my door. The door slammed so hard that the very expensive vase that sits in our living room, directly below my bedroom, shattered into a million pieces. I felt so bad that I spent the next three weeks with a tube of glue and a magnifying glass putting it back together. After I assembled most of the pieces, I realized that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to get it back to the way it was, but it was more the principal of fixing what I had broken; if I had not attempted to fix it, it would have haunted me for the rest of my life.
In
Macbeth, King Duncan was killed of greed; however, Macbeth forced himself to kill his best friend, Banquo, because he figured Banquo knew too much and would kill him for doing so. After he sets Banquo to his death, he feels so guilty that he sees hallucinations of him sitting in his seat at the dinner table. He sees Banquo’s ghost walk up to him. He thinks that Banquo’s ghost will try and kill him. This entire hallucination is solely based on his guilt.

Lady Macbeth has just been killed. We are not told how or why, but she is dead. We are to assume that she has committed suicide. If this is the case, she felt guilty for transforming her husband into a monster.

Feminism

When thinking of feminism, I think of the fight for equality. Since the beginning of time, women have always had less power than men. Men were expected to be strong and protect the family while women were supposed to care for the children and look after the house. Those roles have changed significantly in the last forty years. Women slowly received more and more rights. The trigger for women to gain so much respect was when Congress added the 19th Amendment, women’s ability to vote. While women still to this day do not have as much power or respect as men, there is much more equality now than there ever has been in the past; however, there is still a gap between genders. The fight for feminism has not ended, just slowed down; “some observers say that feminism has become a less potent force since the 1970s because many of the battles for women's equality have already been won.”

Feminism has always been about the equality between genders. This is eminent in today’s society. For example, you look at Hilary Clinton; you may not agree with her politics, but she is still fighting for equality. President of the United States of America has always been a male’s position. Feminists believe that women should possess the ability to lead the nation. Look at Golda Mier ; she was one of Israel’s greatest Prime Ministers, yet she is not a male. Feminists strongly feel they could do just as good a job as men could. The problem is that men do not feel that any women, no matter how smart she is, could be a leader. A woman should not be smarter than a man. I personally feel this is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. There are plenty of women who are way smarter than I will ever be. If you look in the entertainment field, some of the greatest actors are women. For example, my favorite show, 30 Rock , Tina Fey, possibly the funniest person in the world, not only stars in the show, she writes for it and even directs some episodes. I only wish that I could be nearly as talented as she is when I grow up. Many men realize that some women are better than they are, they just do not want to acknowledge it.
When Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, women had minimal power and respect. It is interesting that he had so much respect for women at that time that he gave them such a dominant role in his play. It is not such a big deal when we read it in the modern day, but if you attended a production of this when it was first staged, you would have been flabbergasted. Women have not always played powerful roles in movies. Along time ago, men played all the roles, especially the main roles. One of the first major movies to have a woman as the protagonist was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; Walt Disney’s first feature length animate film. It was extremely rare for audiences to be able to connect with a women character. Young girls finally had a role model to look up to: an innocent princess. It was a first of a long line of Disney Princesses that little girls would look up to.
Since this blog is for English class, I am forced to mention Lady Macbeth from the novel Macbeth, written by Shakespeare. I do not feel that Lady Macbeth shows positive characteristics as a feminist. She is trying to push for women to be better than men, yet I always felt the point of the feminism movement was to create equality between genders. If this were the case, she would not be trying to take over Macbeth’s life. She could suggest things that Macbeth could do, but not pressure him into actually doing them. Then, after Macbeth does these horrible things, she backs away. She wants nothing to do with the consequences of her husband’s actions. She is a terrible feminist. Everyone should learn from her of what not to do.

When Good People Commit Horrible Crimes

The nicest of people sometimes choose to commit the worst of crimes. Governor Eliot Spitzer’s main goal in becoming a politician was to regulate ethics in everyday life. He was a relatively good guy, at least as far as politicians go. Before he was governor of New York, he was the attorney general for eight years. He was well known for his interest against corporate corruption. When he was running for governor, his main promise was to change state politics as soon as possible. Ethics was high on his list. When he did take office, he did nothing that he promised. He was slowly losing respect. He resigned on March 12, 2008, only about a year after he took office. The reason for his resignation was due to the fact that he was involved in a sex scandal. He went from trying to eliminate these scandals to actually taking part in them himself. How can people listen to him if he is a hypocrite? He lost all the respect that he spent years trying to gain. He was forced to resign. His life will never be the same again. He lost all the respect that he gained throughout the years of being a politician. He betrayed his faimly and the people of New York.

Macbeth, a well trusted thane, was a genuinely good person. Just like Spitzer, Macbeth committed a crime that would change his life forever. Out of greed, Macbeth killed the king. He only thought about the immediate results; he did not think about the long term reprecussions. Immediately after killing the king, Macbeth regretted the murder that he commited. He knew that this was a bad idea, and that he would be strongly penalized for his actions. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but he knew something would.
Macbeth did not have a good reason to kill the king. The king was nothing but good to Macbeth. Macbeth was slowly moving up the ranks; however, if he did nothing, Macbeth would never have the chance to become king. If he wanted to become king, he would have had to take action, yet killing the loyal king was not right. Macbeth was not in line for the throne; therefore, he should not have ever had the chance to become king. Whether he deserved to or not is irrelevant, for that is not how kings were selected. Macbeth’s actions were out of line and extremely unjustified. The king was good to him and did not deserve to be killed. Both Macbeth and Govenor Spitzer did unjustifable actions that will change their lives drastically in the future.

Socratic Seminar #1

We had our first Socratic Seminar for Macbeth today because we finished Act I. A Socratic Seminar is a way for people to share their ideas about what they have read. Our teacher posed a few questions and we responded with our thoughts. Since we have a relatively large class, only half of us participate in the Seminar each week. If you do not participate, you have to listen intently to what others have to say. This can be very frustrating because if someone says something that you completely disagree with, you cannot get your opinion heard until the very end, and by then everyone has forgotten the original point that was made.
I did not participate in the Socratic Seminar this morning. I had the pleasure of listening to others’ wonderful ideas about Macbeth. The very first thing that we are always asked is how we are enjoying the book. It seemed that for the most part, people do not like Shakespeare; they feel it is too hard to understand. I can understand this; however, just because something is difficult doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t like it. It is not a bad thing to have to reread some scenes to fully understand what is happening. Sometimes, it is good to be challenged. Personally, I love Shakespeare’s works. I have only read of few of his masterpieces, but I really enjoyed what I have read so far.
One kid said how he really didn’t like the fact that we did not see Macbeth kill King Duncan. He would have loved to see the blood spatter everywhere. I am not into horror movies; I am not big on violence. I could do without the blood; however, that is not why I am glad that Shakespeare did not show this scene. I enjoy the theatre very much. I have seen quite a few plays. I think I might want to be a scenic designer when I grow up. I strongly feel that the greatest sets are the minimalist ones. They are abstract. It is not necessary to show an entire background because the audience can imagine the rest of it. I strongly feel this is the same case with the murder scene in Macbeth. It is important for a play to leave some things to the audience’s imagination; without it, a play would be very boring. Shakespeare knew this. He did not want to bore his audiences.
After the class finished talking about their views on the book, we were asked what a major theme or idea was in the book. For a great deal of time, they talked about the power of women. Lady Macbeth wears the pants in the Macbeth family. She controls Macbeth; she has him on a leash. They also talked about the three witches, all of whom are women, have magical powers, which is another type of power. I pretty much agreed with them. This was a major idea is the book so far. I cam curious to see if this idea will continue in the rest of the book, or will Lady Macbeth loose her power over Macbeth.
One girl made a very insightful remark when she mentioned how it is ironic that women have power in this book because at the time it was written, women had no power or rights at all. It is interesting that Shakespeare felt that they deserved power because most men did not feel this. When reading this play today, it is difficult to pick up the idea of powerful women because this idea is around today. It is not such a big deal; there are plenty of powerful women in today’s world. Although I picked up on the idea of powerful women, I never thought of this idea as being ironic, but now that she mentioned it, it makes a lot of sense.
The last question that was asked talked about power; who had the most power so far. The class split their decisions in half; some said Lady Macbeth was the most powerful, and the other half the class said the three witches were the most powerful. I do not understand how you can see the witches as being powerful. All they did was deliver news to Macbeth about him one day being king. That is not being powerful. They do have magical power to be able to see into the future, but they did not influence him to kill the king; Lady Macbeth did. Some people tried to make the argument that if they hadn’t given Macbeth the news then the entire plot of the book wouldn’t have taken place. While this is true, it does not make them powerful. They went on and on about this stupid idea that does not make any sense; it was true, but it did not help prove their point at all. They must have repeated it ten times. No matter how many times you repeat it, it still will not help you. This was very frustrating to me. It made me very confused.
I cannot wait to read more of this play. It is said to be one of Shakespeare’s greatest. I hope my expectations do not disappoint me.