DAY 4 - CYCLE 6 - SEMESTER 2

PART ONE: THE QUIZ AT THE BEGINNING
Today, you took a 10 question quiz on Lord of the Flies, Macbeth and literary terms. So far, the scores for those quizzes range from 2 out of 10 to 10 out of 10. Some people's errors were concentrated; other people's were spread out. If you know you struggled on any portion of the quiz, take a look at these possible solutions. If these don't work, you should schedule time to see me.

Lord of the Flies

• Keep a character list in the front of your book and track major actions and dominant character traits.
• Set up your own spectrums: each character starts as WHAT and is becoming more WHAT?
• At the bottom of the pages where you see major events happening/critical moments of tension occurring, write a few key words and the names of the characters involved. This will help in review.
• When you come across particularly revealing quotes, highlight them.
• Create your own quotation study guide with your findings.

Macbeth Quotations

• Review the wikispace on a regular basis, adding to it as well.
• Preview scenes the day before class so that you have familiarity with the words, even if you don’t understand them well.
• Identify the words you don’t know and look them up.
• Paraphrase passages in class into your own words as we cover them and afterwards.
• Each night, go through the scenes we have covered, highlighter in hand, and highlight the quotes you think are particularly revealing.
• Review the blog consistently and make sure you can answer the review questions that are posted there.
• Try to relate quotations to larger themes (great chain of being, forcing the wheel of fortune, etc.). Think about what Shakespeare considered a virtue and what he considered a vice; use your studies of the early Enlightenment to inform your thinking. What quotes reveal these moral lessons?

Macbeth Literary Terms

• Review the wikispace regularly and add to it.
• Make note cards of the terms, their definitions, and examples that you can understand easily.
• At the end of class, spend a few minutes going through what we studied in class, and look for examples of terms. Underline them in the text and write the name of the term next to it.
• When looking at the wikispace, be able to explain why a certain passage exemplifies a term. If you can’t explain it in your own words, your understanding of the term is not yet complete.
  
  When the solutions above are not yielding the results you’d like to see, schedule extra help with me.

PART TWO: THE READING OF ACT IV; SCENES i AND ii
Then we read Act IV, scenes i and ii. Here, Macbeth, tormented by the fear and paranoia that consumes him and robs him of rest, goes to consult the witches. There, they show him four images, which lead him through a series of emotions. At the end of the scene, he makes a plan about Macduff & family. The second scene takes place at the Macduff castle in Fife, where Lady Macduff is none too pleased. In her conversations with Ross, we learn quite a bit about the political climate of Scotland under Macbeth.

REVIEW QUESTIONS: if you cannot answer these, you need to go back to your text and clarify your understanding.

1. What do the ingredients of the witches' brew tell us about them?
2. What cost is Macbeth willing to pay to get answers from the weird sisters?
3. What are the four apparitions that Macbeth sees? Know exactly what they are.
4. What exactly does each apparation tell him?
5. What is his emotional response to each of the apparitions?
6. What does Macbeth decide he will do after he hears the second apparition? Why?
7. What does he learn after the witches disappear?
8. What does he decide to do in response to this news?
9. What is Macbeth saying when he states "From this moment/The very firstlins of my heart shall be/The firstlings of my hand"?
10. Why is Lady Macduff so angry at her husband?
11. What is Ross trying to tell her in a thinly veiled way?
12. What does the conversation Lady Macduff has with her son reveal about the political climate in Scotland?
13. What has the messenger come to say?
14. NOTE: In the opening of the scene, Ross tells Lady Macduff that "Cruel are the times when we are traitors/And do not know ourselves" (IV, i, 18-19). At the end of the scene, Lady Macduff says, "I remember now/I am in this earthly world, where to do harm/Is often laudable, to do good sometime/Accounted dangerous folly." First, make sure you understand how these quotes show the world in opposition with itself. Then, consider: how might this relate to our larger understanding of the natural order of things, and of the play's larger theme about appearance and reality?

HOMEWORK

Write a paragraph comparing Macbeth's meeting with the witches from the first act with his meeting in the fourth act. Exactly how has Macbeth changed? Give specific details in your paragraph, incorporating quotes. This may be hand-written or typed, and should be about a page in length.