[blank]
ORC Resource Number #4804
Expand All
Shakespeare's Macbeth: Fear and the Motives of Evil
Promising Practice
PROFESSIONAL COMMENTARY

In this lesson, students read the play Macbeth and analyze the title character's shift from a man who, at the beginning of the play is described as noble and brave, to a violent and ruthless tyrant. Characters whose shifting minds we feel compelled to follow through every twist and turn are a mark of Shakespeare's art. Giving students the tools to follow those shifts is the purpose of this lesson. Following their reading and discussions, students search online texts of Macbeth to identify and collect passages from the play of these key words: blood, fear, mind, false, and sleep. Students will then organize and analyze the passages in which these key words appear, describing what the text reveals about Macbeth's state of mind and the motives behind his increasing evil. As they engage in discussion and research, students focus on a key question: why does Macbeth, who knows that his actions are evil and will be punished, continue to choose evil? This lesson works well for character analysis and literary interpretation and research. (author/ncl)

OHIO STANDARDS
expand +
English Language Arts Standards
Reading Process: Concepts of Print, Comprehension Strategies and Self-Monitoring Strategies Standard
Reading Applications: Literary Text Standard
Writing Applications Standard
NATIONAL STANDARDS
expand +
Standards for the English Language Arts
Range of materials and purposes for reading
Reading strategies, language use, and conventions
Write, speak, and visually represent to create text
Purposes for using spoken, written, and visual language
RESOURCE TYPE
Instructional Resource
PRACTICE LEVEL
Promising Practice
STANDARDS ALIGNMENT
Grades 11–12
TOPICS
English Language Arts --
Literature;
World Literature;
Reading;
Literary Response;
Strategies - Literary Texts;
Writing;
Writing Applications;
FOUND IN
KEYWORDS
character analysis;
Shakespeare;
Macbeth;
literary interpretation;
literary analysis
Publisher: National Endowment for the Humanities
Author: Publisher