In Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is the master mind behind her husbands evil persona. We can say that shes the one who unleashed the evil side of him and perhaps created a monster. What stuck out to me the most was how dominant Lady Macbeth was portrayed. To be a woman and receive such a powerful role can get the mind wondering so much.

In class while we were observing an image, a classmate pointed out the comparison between Eve and Lady Macbeth. I wanted to dig a little deeper into that topic, it made me wonder how come women have been given such a negative impression. In Adam and Eve, Eve was first one to bite into the forbidden fruit and tells Adam to bite into it as well. They were then considered to be the first two to commit sin.

Also, why is it wrong for women to have more courage than men? For instance Lady Macbeth’s monologue in Act 1 Scene 5, she’s practically asking the dark side to change her gender and to take her womanhood away. But why? She could be a daring person regardless of her sex.

Destiny?

Today in class we were discussing about how Macbeth became king and once he became king he was willing to do whatever it took to stay on top. By killed a lot of people, he even changed a lot as a person completely from the very beginning of the story. He went from looking as a hero to the villain of the story. Lady Macbeth played a huge role as well to what he became because all she kept telling him to do was not to be scared and just kill Duncan but this also back fired because she made him into a monster. Now I want to bring back the fact about the part of the story were Macbeth speaks to the three witches and they tell him the future of what’s going to happen, by the end of the story everything that the prophecies says is true. But he spend so much time trying to make it not come true that he ended up doing himself in because of it. Here’s my question do we choose our Fate or are we destined with the fate that is given to us. Like for example is it that you are destined to work at McDonalds but you want to be a doctor; but no matter how hard you try; you’re still in the same situation no matter what you do. Or there is a way to make the destiny you want it to be.

“Of every malice that earns hate in Heaven,

injustice is the end; and each such end

by force or fraud brings harm to other men.

However, fraud is man’s peculiar vice;

God finds it more displeasing – and therefore,

the fraudulent are lower, suffering more.” (22-27)

In Dante’s Inferno, we discuss about the interesting sins listed in his version of Hell. There are some sins that don’t exist in our society today (or rather, lack there of). Hypocrisy is a sin listed much further down the hierarchy, but there seemed to be a general consensus that everyone is a hypocrite, and it really shouldn’t be listed there after all.

Our ideals reflect what we consider to be bad and good, and in this case, we have evolved over time to what seems to be Dante’s worst nightmare. What he justified as bad is what we have acknowledged to be apart of human nature. We are not perfect, and that might frighten Dante. For him, imperfections in any way are unjustifiable. We must be pure, perfect samaritans – but does that sound realistic? From what we believe, everyone at one point may have sinned (in regards to Dante’s version of Hell or not). For Dante, it seemed that if you committed ANY sin, you were destined for Hell.

But this brings up the idea that sins, over time, can be justified dependent on the era and person – and maybe even provide a gateway to Heaven regardless of certain actions. Do you believe that it’s possible to enter Heaven even with sins (what you consider to be sins) under your belt? If so, what sins are truly indicative of an entry to Hell? What are some sins that aren’t so bad?

The World Upside Down

In Canto XXXIV, when Virgil and the Pilgrim climbed down to Lucifer’s legs; they noticed that the world and the axis had changed. This is an upside and downward world in which both “realms” share the same perspective, but the viewpoint is different depending on where you are standing in the upside or the downward world. After their long journey, they became aware that the spiral of Hell is like a staircase bringing them upward. There is a fragment or a line that separate and hold these two worlds together. Virgil and the Pilgrim cross that line to reach the upside world also known as “our world”. They left Hell without realizing that they were descending upward; throughout the book of “The Divine Comedy- Volume 1: Inferno”, Virgil and the Pilgrim entered nine circles of Hell encountering numerous of sins such as lustful, wrathful, heresy, Malebolge, and violence also meeting the sinners who committed these sins. However, what was the purpose of learning and understanding about the sins and the punishment? Are we (the readers) are more mindful about the sins after reading the Inferno? The hardship of this trip symbolizes that we all have to overcome obstacles in order to reach our goal like Virgil and the Pilgrim; their goal was to exit Hell and traveling upward in which they succeeded. This last Canto was interesting about Lucifer’s legs of how the Pilgrim and Virgil found themselves in another “world”; I think that they were confused, but amazed of how the world transformed.

                        We climbed, he first and I behind, until,

                        through a small round opening ahead of us

                        I saw the lovely things the heavens hold,

                        And we came out to see once more the stars. (136-139)

Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man (1943)

by Salvador Dalí

Literary character before Shakespeare is relatively unchanging; women and men are represented as aging and dying, but not as changing because their relationship to themselves, rather than to the gods or God, has changed. In Shakespeare, characters develop rather than unfold, and they develop because they reconceive themselves. Sometimes this comes about because they overhear themselves talking, whether to themselves or to others. Self-overhearing is their royal road to individuation, and no other writer, before or since Shakespeare, has accomplished so well the virtual miracle of creating utterly different yet self-consistent voices for his more than one hundred major characters and many hundreds of highly distinctive minor personages. (xix)

From Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human

MACBETH IN PERFORMANCE

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth (1889)

by John Singer Sargent

Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (Act 5, sc. 5)

MACBETH:

She should have died hereafter.

There would have been a time for such a word.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Orson Welles

Ian McKellen

Patrick Stewart

I think it is very interesting to look at the different sins and how they are “graded” according to their severity. As we know and have talked about, there are two different “Dantes” in this story, Dante the poet who is the creator of this world and Dante the pilgrim who is the Hero of this comedy. Even if you may think these two persons think and feel the same, that is not true. There are cases where Dante the Pilgrim feels that the punishment is not fair and perhaps not suitable for the sin.

We have recently discussed the different types of hell in “Inferno” and we know that Dante travels different levels of hell with Virgil. In my perspective, some of the punishments were really gruesome, but others fit the punishments of the sinners. It is understandable that some sins are unforgivable, and it doesn’t seem right to me that they have to suffer for all of eternity. In fact Dante feels that some way for some of the sinners because he feels empathy throughout the whole story. It tells me that the sinners may have suffered greatly but isn’t given any chance to prove that they understand what they did wrong. Some people committed a sin without knowing it and it really makes me upset because they aren’t given a second chance to prove themselves.

In my perspective and recent discussions in our class, there was some variations on which sin was seen to be taken more seriously than others. As a result there were different opinions that people had because everybody don’t think the same and they view certain sins to be unjustifiable where others feel like it would be less severe. If I were to ask the question, “Which sin is the bad and which sin is the worst?” We would have a controversy

Is it possible to see through one’s sins and give them a chance to redeem themselves? Which sins do you think people should be able to redeem themselves for? And why?

While discussing the Inferno in class, a question was raised that caught my attention. How come every time Dante is talking to someone suffering, the suffering seems to stop for as long as Dante is talking to them? Punishments in hell are supposed to be continuous, however this is not the case when Dante is interacting with someone. When said interaction is happening, nothing is said or done to suggest the punishment is continuing during the interaction. This leaves room for a reader to assume the punishment has stopped for a predetermined amount of time. It is possible Dante does this to emphasize a difference between a living person and a dead person. Even though Dante is not divine, in the grand scheme of things he is on a higher “pedestal” than the dead and suffering. This can be compared to the angel coming down from heaven earlier in the book. Even though Dante doesn’t make the ground quake, just like the angel, all the attention is placed on him. This can lead one to believe Dante isn’t considering himself as a lowly pilgrim in every situation, only when it is necessary to change convey a point to the reader. He wants to leave the reader with a sense of seniority and a degree of opportunity to repent their sins, since it is evident if you are alive in hell you still have some favor with God.

Before you go I leave you with this question: Will these “pausing of suffering” cease once God returns and all punishments are perfected ?

When we think about death we believe there is only heaven or hell afterwards. However, Dante’s Inferno takes on hell in a different manner than we expect. Dante divides hell in circles each circle is meant for a specific sinner and their punishment. The sinners are to spend the rest of their eternity in hell or at least until they are deemed worthy to move on. They are doomed to repeat this cycle over and over again. But what makes these sinners so different from the people who move on to heaven? Even people in heaven had to commit a sin at some point in there life so why are their sins “forgiven” or ignored and those who are in hell are not forgiven and are forced to suffer. Even Dante himself questions and ask Virgil in Canto XI why there are different circles in hell. Writers like Virgil are sentenced to hell because they were born at a time before God so why are they unable to be pardoned, their only sin being not knowing about God. It seems hell does punish those who have wronged others in their lifetime but hell also punishes those who were unable to believe in God for they were not born during a certain era. Who’s to say heaven isn’t a place where sinners reside, only these sinners are not given the same treatment as those in hell. Why does hell and heaven hold such distinctions between one another? In the end, we are all frauds, we are all sinners the only difference is some of us will end up in heaven.