Defining Terms

Motif

The race car decor in your room, the refrain of a song, the idea or object that keeps popping up in a story — these are all motifs, reoccurring elements that move throughout and shape music, art and novels.

This French import is related to the Latin verb movere which means "to move." Think about a pattern or design that moves throughout something when you hear motif. Have you ever been to a restaurant with a tropical or wild-west motif? Do you like dresses with a floral motif? In novels, a motif can be a recurring idea like revenge or object that symbolizes an idea. A character might notice shadows throughout a story which symbolize his dark past.

from Vocabulary.com

Symbol

A symbol can be an object, shape, sign, or character used to represent something else. A flag is a symbol of a country. English teachers never tire of talking about symbols in literature.

A pink ribbon is a symbol of breast-cancer awareness, and a yellow ribbon is a symbol of support for U.S. troops. In literature, authors use many symbols. A character doing even a small thing, like eating a cheeseburger, might symbolize something larger about that character. Something you need to be rich to have — like a limousine — is called a "status symbol." Anytime one thing seems to represent a deeper meaning, it's probably a symbol.

from Vocabulary.com

Motifs

Equivocation

The word equivocate comes from two Latin words aequus and vocare, which mean "equal" and "voice." When a person equivocates, they are being deliberately unclear. They say something with two equally possible meanings. As you read the play, trace this idea by marking every time people are deliberately ambiguous.

Nature

Another big motif in the play is Nature. Remember Elizabethans believed in a natural order of things, a Great Chain of Being. As you read, trace the idea of nature by marking places in your text when you see people seem "un-natural" or when nature (e.g. animals, the weather, etc.) reacts to events in the play. How and why does nature react unnaturally to people's actions in the play? How do characters defy nature or this "natural order" in the play and what are the results?

James Shapiro on Equivocation, Witches, and more

Here Shapiro discusses the extent to which characters equivocate in Macbeth, along with its contemporary relevance. Other topics included in his discussion are witches, murderers, and choices. James Shapiro is a leading expert in Shakespeare studies and is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

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Defining Terms

Theme

While theme is often used to refer to big ideas like Love, Power, or Free Will, we will use it here to refer to a statement of universal truth based on a recurring idea in a story. Love, then, is the recurring idea in Romeo & Juliet that can be used to write a theme, but it is not the theme itself. To get you thinking more deeply about these topics, we will go further to say that a theme consists of three elements: Topic, Claim, & Qualification.

Here is an example: "The nature of evil is primarily deceptive because while it promises success, it leads only to slavery."
Topic: Nature of evil
Claim: Evil is deceptive
Qualification: It promises success but leads to slavery

Use the following big ideas (Ambition, Evil, Ambiguity, Gender) to create themes in Macbeth.

Big Idea: Ambition

Ambition is a common idea in the biggest stories out there, and we love stories where a person's ambition gets the best of them. Consider Littlefinger's monologue about the ladder of success in Game of Thrones: "Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is." Jordan Belfort, the inspiration for The Wolf of Wall Street, sacrificed everything in his life for the pursuit of excess. Or, as author Laura Bogart says of Walter White in her article Anything Less Than Extraordinary: Breaking Bad and American Ambition, "Anything that impedes that success—a business competitor, your own wife, or a small child—should be dispatched in a finger snap." What does Shakespeare's Macbeth add to the discussion of ambition?

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Big Idea: The Nature of Evil

When Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, James I considered himself an expert on witches. The Elizabethan view of witches was that witches were instruments of evil. Consider the play's initial introduction of the three witches: in the first scene, one has the thumb of a dismembered pilot, and in scene 3, another plots how she will torture an innocent sailor. Think then of the witches as symbols of evil. If that's what they are, what does the play suggest about the nature of evil? Notice also that Macbeth and Banquo both encounter evil but have different reactions to what Banquo calls "instruments of darkness." For further readings, see Elaine Pilkington's article "Macbeth and the Nature of Evil."

PBS's "A Force of Evil: The Witches and Macbeth"

Big Idea: Masculinity & Gender

The writers of Shmoop.com point out that our idea that masculinity is being un-feeling or unemotional is a fairly modern (300 year-old) idea, but before that, men were considered the ones capable of deep emotions while women were thought to have only flighty emotions unless it related to children. Consider three men in Macbeth: Duncan, Macbeth, and Macduff. While Duncan is one a man of feeling and not action, Macbeth is a man of action without feeling. Macduff is the one who both feels and acts. When he hears of the murder of his family and is criticized ("Dispute it like a man") for how emotionally he takes the news, Macduff's response is "I shall do so; / But I must also feel it as a man." For more on this topic, see the article, "Macduff in Macbeth."

60-Second Recap on Masculinity