“Which of you shall we say doth love us most” Act 1, Scene 1, Line 52. Through this, both King Lear’s and Gloucester’s rage and rashness can be seen, resulting in them both loosing sight of what is important. Despite this, their weak characteristics have a small influence on their tragedy and suffering. After King Lear bestows all his possessions to his daughters, rather than being grateful, Goneril and Regan’s lust for power causes them to turn on their father. In Act 2, Scene 4, Goneril and Regan diminish his retinue, disregard his authority and Goneril instructs her servants to treat King Lear with the utmost disrespect.
She feels that Pip was the destroyer of her dreams, so she seeks revenge to destroy his.Pg12 2) “So, I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me” The author is using a metaphor that Estella’s success and failure both create the person she is. The quote is important because matron accuses Estella of being ingratitude, cold, and having a lack of love. So Estella replies by asking how Miss Havisham could reproach her ward for being cold when her personality came about as a direct result of Miss Havisham's tutelage. Pg.373 3) “My convict looked round him for the first time, and saw me… I looked at him eagerly when he looked at me, and slightly moved my hands and shook my head.
Miller leaves the audience with a negative impression of the affect that these with power can have over others as he conveys the suffering that can result from such situations. Abigail lies to conceal her affair, and to prevent charges of witchcraft. Lowering her eyes to Parris, Abigail innocently pleads “we never conjured spirits”. Abigail shifts the focus away from herself, finding an avenue of power and takes full advantage of it. Ruthlessly accusing others of witchcraft she changes her story as a desperate act of self-preservation, “I danced with the devil; I saw him; I wrote in his book; I go back to Jesus; I kiss his hand.
We are immediately faced with a pessimistic representation of human nature in The Tempest in Act 1 Scene 2 through the character of Caliban and his actions in regards to Miranda, the protagonist’s (Prospero) daughter. Prospero alludes to Caliban attempting to rape his daughter as he says "...I have used thee, / Filth as thou art, with human care and lodged thee / In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate /The honour of my child." For Shakespeare to almost open the play with such a savage representation of Caliban allows us to interpret that he is going to explore the extent to which freedom within human nature can often lead to abhorrent actions. However, we must consider that we only have Prospero’s account for the said occurrence and it is evident that Prospero arguably loathes Caliban, Regarding him as a "beast" and a "poisonous slave, and so it’s possible that the things he says about him are not necessarily wholly true. Despite this, we must consider that Prospero and Miranda initially took on the role of caring and educating Caliban in replace of his Mother and Miranda endeavours to scold Caliban for being ungrateful regarding her attempts to educate him in Act 1 Scene 2 - “When thou didst not, savage, / Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like / A thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes / With words that made them known.” From this, we can gather that Shakespeare is attempting to argue the futility in humans attempting to help one another through Caliban’s rebellion and failure to adopt a moral stance which is another criticism of human nature.
Pearl symbolizes evil in the story by representing God's punishment of Hester's sin, symbolizing the guilt and the scarlet letter that controls her behavior and defying Puritan laws by being cheerful and associating with nature. Pearl is a greater punishment then Hester’s “A”. First, Pearl represents God's punishment by her mocking and nagging of Hester. This is shown throughout the novel she sometimes seemed to her mother as almost a witch baby (Hawthorne 88).Second, Pearl is a baffling mixture of strong emotions with a fierce temper and a capacity for evil; with Pearl, Hester's life became one of constant nagging, and no joy. This is proven when Hester remarks to herself, "Oh Father in heaven - if thou art still my father - what is this being which I have brought into the world" (Hawthorne 89).Thirdly, Pearl represents the sins of both Hester and Dimmesdale.
This forebodes the death of Macbeth and also Lady Macbeth by suggesting that they will not be able to kill the King and live a normal, guilt free life afterwards. Lady Macbeth then creates irony as she mocks Macbeth for thinking this way, she refers to him as a ‘coward’ and insists that this murder is necessary. This part of the play is extremely significant as we realise just how harsh Lady Macbeth is and how far she would really go. She removes any maternal characteristics that she may have had by explaining that her lack of pity would extend so far, that she would murder a baby. “Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed the brains out”.
(88-89) In his book, On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy, H. S. Wilson explains the stand taken by Macbeth in his relationship with fate: He pits himself no merely against the threat of hell but also against the enmity of "Fate" (as represented in the prophecies of the Weird Sisters): come, Fate, into the list, And champion me to th' utterance. He brags to his wife: But let the frame of tings disjoint, both the worlds suffer, Ere we will eat our meal in fear [. . .]. (70-71) In Everybody's Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies, Maynard Mack explains that the witches are associated with fate: Except in one phrase (I.3.6) and in the stage directions, the play always refers to the witches as weyard - or weyward - sisters.
At times, when he says to the governess, “Give that little witch a beating,” (21), he is advocating for a stranger to abuse his child. Despite the governess effort to protect and influence her into becoming a normal child, Irma, instead choose to find solace in witchcraft; a result of the constant berating from her father. “He wants me to be a witch, then I will be a witch,” she declares to the governess and
Brabantio made a very long speech about this and protested heavily that Desdemona had nothing to do with falling in love with the Moor. Brabantio says to the Duke during their exchange: “She is abused, stolen from me, and corrupted by spells and medicines bought of montebanks.” Here Brabantio refers to Othello using spells and medicines to entice his daughter to marry the likes of him. Brabantio then starts to talk about witchcraft. He was saying that he has also used witchcraft to encourage and persuade his daughter. “Sans witchcraft.” He’s referring to a very famous French witchcraft.
In Act Four, during Macbeth’s last encounter with the witches, the reader witnesses how Macbeth demands the witches and their apparitions to “answer [him]/To what [he asks them]” (IV.i.60-61) and arrogantly only takes the apparitions’ messages literally so that their messages favor what he wants to believe. When compared to how Macbeth reacts when the witches first approach him, their prophecy leaving him speechless and analyzing whether or not/how that prophecy will come to fruition, Shakespeare clearly conveys how much Macbeth’s power has gone to his head. The immorality of Macbeth’s character is deepened in the very next act when he sends for Macduff’s defenseless wife and child to be killed only for the purpose of furthering the safety of his own power. His corrupt character even shows through while preparing for battle and on the battlefield. His wickedness is first portrayed in Act Five when he mocks a fearful servant giving him news of the enemy approach as a “lily-liver’d boy” (V.iii.15) and when he demands the doctor cure his wife of her mental illness although the doctor explains that he can do nothing for her.