Today we looked at the murder scene from Macbeth in the other section of the 11th grade.
We watched the scene in the Dench/McKellan film adaptation, in which Macbeth, after committing the deed (the murder), returns to the stage with his hands bloodied.
For the next several minutes he slowly rotates his sticky, shiny, stained hands in front of his face, seemingly transfixed. Someone asked "Why does he just stare at his hands so much?" I posed the question to the class and, in classic 11-5 style, they had terrific answers.
A. said Macbeth might be amazed at the power of his own hands to have committed such an act.
Y. said power had nothing to do with it, he was seriously afraid of what he had done.
N. said he was fascinated and appalled by the evidence, and still in shock - "Did I really do it?"
M. said the director was giving us an opportunity to think about the way we refer to the image of bloody hands in our daily language, when we apportion guilt, as in "He has blood on his hands" and then exonerate, as in "That washed the blood from his hands."
I then brought their attention to Lady Macbeth's line "A little water clears us of this deed. How easy is it, then?"
While she's referring to the removal of the blood from her hands, we acknowledged that her question could be posed to the larger question of the murder: how easy, is it, in fact, to kill someone? The physical deed may be easy, but Macbeth seems to be learning that murder involves mental challenges he finds it difficult to withstand.
We watched the scene in the Dench/McKellan film adaptation, in which Macbeth, after committing the deed (the murder), returns to the stage with his hands bloodied.
For the next several minutes he slowly rotates his sticky, shiny, stained hands in front of his face, seemingly transfixed. Someone asked "Why does he just stare at his hands so much?" I posed the question to the class and, in classic 11-5 style, they had terrific answers.
A. said Macbeth might be amazed at the power of his own hands to have committed such an act.
Y. said power had nothing to do with it, he was seriously afraid of what he had done.
N. said he was fascinated and appalled by the evidence, and still in shock - "Did I really do it?"
M. said the director was giving us an opportunity to think about the way we refer to the image of bloody hands in our daily language, when we apportion guilt, as in "He has blood on his hands" and then exonerate, as in "That washed the blood from his hands."
I then brought their attention to Lady Macbeth's line "A little water clears us of this deed. How easy is it, then?"
While she's referring to the removal of the blood from her hands, we acknowledged that her question could be posed to the larger question of the murder: how easy, is it, in fact, to kill someone? The physical deed may be easy, but Macbeth seems to be learning that murder involves mental challenges he finds it difficult to withstand.
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