Introduction to the Blog

This blog was created as one of the requirements to fulfill during the Honors Class 2008-2009 of the CCA school year. It acts as a virtual portfolio where all my particular essays concerning short stories, novels, and poetry are kept, as well as my own brief writings and poems. The strongest essays are the ones which are most recently posted, the ones written during the final months of the school year. This blog shows my writing development throughout the whole school year, and clearly portrays the betterment of my organizational and analytical skills while writing essays about any given subject.

Spartan Women

They say we have no hearts,
because we suffer in silence.
But sometimes the most silent
suffering is the most
torturous of all.

We see our men, husbands and sons,
off to war. Our faces are cold
and straight, our pose erect,
our eyes like glass.
But inside we are shattered,
our souls destroyed
and wrecked with pain.

We proudly walk the streets
of our city during the day;
our people see us as a source
of courage, of endurance, and strength.
What would be of our city
if they saw us break down,
saw us weep?
We are the wall that keep fear away
and locks courage in.
We are the women,
The soul of this city
tall, proud and brave.

The tears come at night
when we lie in our cold beds.
At night, we are only women
defenseless and alone.
We cry silently to the moon,
the tears stream down without
restraint. Thoughts of our sons,
of death and of loss
fill our mind and our hearts
until the pain is too much to bear.

Then the sun rises.
We clean our bodies,
we wash our faces.
We stand erect and proud,
faces straight,
gaze hard and strong.  
We are the pillars of the city
that keep the morale of our
people high.
We are the wall that keeps fear out
and locks courage in.
We are the women,
and we suffer only in silence,
the most torturous of pains.

By Monique Sanchíz

Vladimir’s Madness

¨Much madness is divinest Sense-
To a discerning Eye-¨
Emily Dickinson

          Vladimir’s madness, as seen in Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy ¨Waiting for Godot¨ can be seen, through a discerning eye, as the expression of a hopeful soul yearning for some sort of personal salvation to deliver him from despair. His quirky phrases and behavior can be seen as not so much expressions of insanity when looked upon closely but as inclinations of an idealistic man.
          Vladimir constantly reminds his partner in the play, Estragon, that they are waiting for Godot. He hangs on to this duty, to this pretense, as if it were the only thing that mattered or the only thing that sustained him or that brought him some type of reassurance. ¨Vladimir: We´ll hang ourselves tommorow. Unless Godot comes. Estragon: And if he comes? Vladimir: We´ll be saved.¨ (pg.109) It is of utter importance to Vladimir that they not forget that amidst the barren wasteland that surrounds him, they have one purpose for which to live… which is to wait for Godot. Vladimir refuses to give himself in to utter hopelessness. He has faith that Godot will arrive, hoping against hope for a change in their situation to come.
          In this sense, Vladimir can be considered an idealist. He believes that a change for the better will come. His idealistic nature is conveyed through the fact that he is always looking for a new hat to wear, because his irked him. His aches are concerned with his head, or with ideas. This implies that his nature is more akin with the ¨thought-filled¨ or ¨elevated¨ matters of existence, in opposition to his partner, Estragon, who is mostly in touch with his guttural instincts and is mostly only concerned with finding something to eat. What would seem like insanity at first sight, what with Vladimir never finding a hat that suited him, would upon further analysis be seen as the natural expression of a restless, idealistic mind who is never content with the situation at hand but is always inclined to look for a better situation in which to live, as is Vladimir while he waits for Godot.
          As the play progresses, the audience gets the impression that Godot, in fact, is never going to come. Towards the end of the play, it seems that Vladimir begins to lose some of the rational hope attached to the belief that Godot will arrive and somehow everything will be better then. It seems that Godot sent a personal messenger, a small boy, to deliver once again the news that Vladimir had been hearing apparently every single day before that day. ¨ Vladimir: You have a message from Mr. Godot. Boy: Yes sir. Vladimir: He won´t come this evening. Boy: No sir. Vladimir: But he´ll come tommorow. Boy: Yes sir. Vladimir: Without fail. Boy: Yes sir. Silence.¨ (pg. 105). Although it appears as if Vladimir’s hope does diminish towards the end of the second act, it does not completely die out. He remains intent on waiting for the never-arriving Godot. ¨Vladimir:  We have to come back tomorrow. Estragon: What for? Vladimir: To wait for Godot. ¨ (pg. 107). The hope that Vladimir expressed in the beginning of the play is not completely shattered, not even towards the end. If it were for nothing else, his idealistic views on Godot must persist as a protection from utter nihilism. Without this hope, Vladimir would fall into complete darkness and despair.
          We have but to delve deeper into Vladimir’s nature to be able to deeply understand the reason for all his quirks and apparent mad behavior. This eccentric behavior can be even deemed, if not completely reasonable, at least not without meaning that reflects his nature as a man who refuses to give himself into the nothingness that surrounds him and that hangs on with all he has to the little hope that is granted to him and that he wishes for so deeply, to be saved from what he is surrounded by, to enter into a new better situation when Godot will come.

Call upon the heroes; Analysis on the poems ¨London, 1802¨ by William Wordsworth and ¨Douglass¨ by Paul Laurence Dunbar

          Both poems, ¨London, 1802¨ by William Wordsworth and ¨Douglass¨ by Paul Laurence Dunbar narrate from the same viewpoint; the speaker talks about their nation being in need of strength and virtue and honor. Both speakers call upon prominent men who in the past have fueled their nation’s virtue and filled the men with purity; men who have acted as positive catalysts upon the minds of many and who have inspired an upraise in collective goodness or strength. But even though there is a need in both poems for the long gone inspiration that these men have fueled, the setting of the poems and the times in which the poems are taking place are very different.
          Wordsworth calls upon Milton, an English poet who championed the cause of liberty and public virtue and who is still one of the most prominent figures of decency and purity among all of English poets to date. The speaker of the poem exclaims that ¨England hath need of thee (Milton): she is a fen/ Of stagnant waters¨ (lines 2-3), a country who has forfeited their traditional virtues and thus forfeited their honor and pride. ¨We are selfish men; / Oh! Raise us up, return to us again; / And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power¨ (lines 6-8) exclaims the speaker, poignantly emphasizing  the need that the selfish community of England has for the manners and virtue that Milton lived by and that is the national endowment of England to all of its people.
          It is right for the speaker to call upon Milton, for he states that ¨Thy (his) soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart; / Thou (he) had a voice whose sound was like the sea: / Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free…¨ (lines 9-11) and only such a man can serve as the best example for the ¨selfish¨ men of England of his time. According to the speaker, Milton was an unselfish and generous person, who ¨didst travel on life’s common way, / In cheerful godliness; / and yet thy (his) heart / The lowliest duties on herself did lay¨ (lines 12-14), thus implicating that Milton was a man who served others before himself, a dutiful, honorable man, whose generosity of spirit is something that is lacking in all of England’s people at that particular year in time (1802).
          Wordsworth was referring to England’s people in general when he stated that they had become selfish and forgotten their virtues and therefore needed Milton to rescue them from their ¨stagnant waters¨;  but Dunbar calls upon Douglass, an American writer whose autobiography made him a leader in the abolitionist cause, for a different matter altogether. He calls upon him for strength and comfort in the hard times that the country, the United States, is facing. ¨Ah, Douglass, we have fall’n on evil days¨ (line 1) the speaker claims at the beginning of the poem.  The speaker of the poem claims that America is passing through dark, difficult times, times that Douglass didn’t even know, when ¨When thee (he), the eyes of that harsh long ago/ Saw, salient, at the cross of devious ways,/ And all the country heard thee (him) with amaze¨ (lines 3-5). Douglass is a figure who is known not for being a poet or a political writer as Milton was, but for being a former slave and a man whose experiences and own hardships can serve as inspiration to fight and as a fountain of strength for all the other men who are living through similarly difficult times.
          In the times where ¨the waves of swift dissension swarm, / And Honor, the strong pilot, lieth stark¨ (lines 9-10) the speaker calls upon Douglass’s strong voice, a voice loaded with the certainty only granted by personal experience, for it to be a comfort to many who are opposing the swift waves of dissension and for it to bring strength to the ones still standing amidst the dark. ¨Oh for thy voice high sounding o’er the storm, / For thy strong arm to guide the shivering bark, / The blast-defying power of thy form, / To give us comfort through the lonely dark¨ (lines 11-14) explains the speaker, calling on to Douglass as a figure of strength to bring both inspiration and solace to the ones who are still fighting during these hard times in America.
          Milton is called upon by Wordsworth to bring back the decency of public virtue to the decaying masses of the selfish men of England, and Douglass is called upon by Dunbar for the purpose of having his voice, his story, act as both comfort and strength to the men who are resisting the cruelties that America is living through in the year that poem was written. Both poems call upon great national figures, figures who would serve as examples and inspiration to all who remember them, but for very different motives.

Analysis of ¨If I could tell you¨ by W.H Auden

          In this particular villanelle, the first and third lines of the poem; ¨Time will say nothing but I told you so¨ and ¨If I could tell you I would let you know¨ (lines 1 and 3, respectively) describes how time, personified as an all-knowing omniscient being in W.H Auden’s ¨If I could tell you¨ poem has complete knowledge of all aspects of life, while the human narrator of the story has but a limited ability in foreseeing what will come, as the rest of us mortals. These lines become the closing lines of the first four stanzas, alternating their order to punctuate or highlight the overall meaning just described.
          The poem has only one rhyme scheme, the ABA pattern, except for the sixth and final stanza which we will analyze later. The first lines of all stanzas end in something that rhymes with ¨so¨ and ¨know¨ , which are the last words of every third line of each stanza (alternating their order and using only one at a time). For example, we can take; ¨If we should weep when clowns put on their show,/ If we should stumble when musicians play,/ Time will say nothing but I told you so.¨ (lines 4-6) we can see a clear example of the ABA rhyme scheme. This particular stanza refers to all the unexpected events of human life; such as the weeping and the stumbling; events that we ourselves wouldn’t have predicted and perhaps don’t really understand until much later. Time, however, knows all our fates, knows all our stumbles and all our tears beforehand and even knows the meaning of them. ¨Time will say nothing but I told you so¨, because time knew all along what was coming from us.
           This contradicts with human vision, which is in a way shortsighted and imperfect. This principle is expressed directly in the fifth stanza; ¨Perhaps the roses really want to grow, / The vision seriously intends to stay, / If I could tell you I would let you know.¨ (lines 13-15). Humans in general don’t know if the future ahead is bright or gloomy, if the roses will grow or if any romantic moment or vision in life will settle itself and remain or whether it will yield to future misery. Humans don’t know what things they will gain, what joys they will have to give up, but ¨Time only knows the price we have to pay…¨ (line 2).
          The sixth and last stanza breaks the rhyme scheme, it is an ABA 3 lined stanza as the previous ones in the poem. This is done in this particular poem to express its ultimate meaning in an overall encompassing way. The two main lines and the most meaningful lines; ¨Will time say nothing but I told you so? ¨ and ¨If I could tell you I would let you know¨ are the final two lines of the poem respectively and act as the closing lines of the poem, one final highlight as to the poem’s whole meaning; human’s blindness and time’s awareness to all the trials ahead of mankind, to all its joys and sufferings, to all its stumbling and pains.

I Sing the Body Electric!

           ¨I sing the body electric¨ by Walt Whitman and the song from the musical Fame with the same name share some similarities, but contrast greatly on the most important theme of all. While Walt Whitman’s poem celebrates life and recognizes entire fulfillment for only ¨being¨; not reaching, but existing; the song from Fame celebrates the journey towards this yet-unreached fulfillment of being. The definition of fulfillment and how it truly expresses itself also differ greatly.
          Both poems refer to or place meaning upon the human soul. In Walt Whitman’s case, the body is a direct expression of the soul. ¨O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women/nor the likes of the parts of you, /I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and/ that they are the soul,) ¨ (lines 1-4), says Whitman of his body. He is linking the beauty of his soul directly to the beauty of his body, comparing the perfectness of the different functions and aspects of his body to that of his soul.  Whitman exclaims that ¨The thin red jellies within you and within me, the bones and the marrow/ in the bones,/ The exquisite realization of health;/ O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,/ O I say now these are the soul!¨ (lines 34-36), stating that the body is not only the reflection of the soul but the soul itself.
          Since from Whitman’s perspective, the body is the soul, then there is nothing more to yearn for outside our own human faculties. The beauty of our bodies, the beauty of being a man or a woman is self-fulfillment in its highest degree. We are fulfilled because we ourselves are beauty expressed, beauty incarnate. This realization of complete and total fulfillment, the feeling of joy and exultation, is not only directly expressed by Whitman through the meaning conveyed in the poem but also in its structure. Whitman describes the human body minutely, taking almost every detail into account as if all the body parts were pieces of a puzzle that came together gloriously to reveal the human soul. Every detail is important, because every detail brings us closer to the united complexity of the excellence, to the completeness, of our souls.
         The song ¨I Sing the Body Electric¨ from Fame, however, is different. The meaning it places upon the human soul is a reflection of one of the core transcendentalist beliefs; that of the being always reaching, always yearning for fulfillment but never wholly attaining it. It celebrates the search for fulfillment, for beauty and for the excellence of the soul, which is different from celebrating the belief that your soul is already perfect. ¨I sing the body electric. / I celebrate the me yet to come, ¨ (lines 1-2) is how the song begins. From the beginning, the song directly expresses the fact that the fulfillment of the human soul is not here yet, but will arrive.
          Walt Whitman’s poem idolizes the human body and defines it as the excellent representation, nay, the soul itself and the epitome of its beauty. It embraces the fact that fulfillment can be found from within, from your own self, from your body, and it does not have to be searched for outside of our range because it is already within our grasp. On the contrary, the song from Fame clearly desires for the soul to expand outside the borders of the human body and to blend or become one with the universe around it. The following lines: ¨And I burn with the fire of 10 million stars. /And in time, / And in time, / We will all be stars.¨ (lines 7-10) is a direct expression of the song’s meaning referring to not only the ultimate fulfillment that has not yet come but will come in time, but also to the fact that this fulfillment can only be found when the soul leaves its body and expands outward, uniting itself with the universe and becoming one with it. When the singer(s) of the song state(s) that ¨I (it) taste(s) to my (its) own reunion/ When I (it) become(s) one with the sun¨ (lines 3-4) it is directly alluding to the all encompassing unity of itself with the most intimate part of the universe, the figure of the sun being the center or the core of not only all galaxies, but also of the universe itself. They do not refer to the sun of our solar system, but to the idea of the greater sun, the symbol of universal light and unity.
          Unity, entire unity of the soul with its surroundings is the concept of self fulfillment in this song of Fame. It is a concept yet unattainable, but one that is yearned for and is always looked after. Walt Whitman, however, is not so trapped in the journey of self fulfillment or in the imaginings of it, because according to him, he never had to depart. The destination was within him all the time; the destination was him. The soul in its entirety is fulfillment, and if the body is the soul, then we are all, men and women, expressions of complete fulfillment ourselves. The poem and the song may have the same title and may both touch the concepts of the human soul and its completeness, but their approaches to this concept lie on opposite ends of the spectrum altogether.

Southern Mentality, on ¨Revelation¨ and ¨A good man is hard to find¨ by Flannery O’Connor

          When O’connor creates characters like the grandmother in ¨A good man is hard to find¨ and Mrs. Turpin in ¨Revelation¨, she is presenting a social critique towards the typical southern mentality and attitude towards both Christian religion and other aspects of its community life, but also encourages the betterment of such mentality.
          Both the grandmother and Mrs. Turpin are hypocritical about their faith. The grandmother is a conceited and self-absorbed woman who talks of Jesus and her faith when she is about to be murdered by a killer. When she gets killed, the murderer states that she would’ve been talking about Jesus all her life if she had always had a gun pointed at her face. It is through these ending words that O’Connor directly expresses the explicit hypocrisy of the grandmother; a woman who had been a terrible being all her life but who suddenly turned pious and compassionate when somebody was about to take her life, but that wouldn’t have otherwise.
          Mrs. Turpin could also be considered religiously hypocritical. She often had inward monologues with herself where she imagined thanking Jesus for making her the decent, respectable woman that she was and not a ‘white trash’ or a ‘nigger’. Being socially prejudiced is of course a direct and ironic contrast not only to Mrs. Turpin’s claims of being a decent woman but of her supposed godliness in being a person of faith. O’Connor’s purpose in creating a character such as Mrs. Turpin was to have it contrast directly with the authentic Christian doctrine; which is essentially love for God and for your neighbor. This contrast exposes Mrs. Turpin’s (which stands as a representative character of all the people of southern United States) hypocrisy, as well as exposing the general religious hypocrisy of the south.
          The way O’Connor portrays the two characters is different, because the characters themselves are different from one another. The grandmother is disliked by almost her whole family, and it is she who, through her selfishness and foolishness, causes the death of all of them. She is not a likable person in general, not by the characters of the story or by the readers. Mrs. Turpin, on the contrary, seems to be likable person (at least on the surface) by most of the other characters of story, judging by their reactions to her. The fact that most of the characters seems almost attracted to a person like Mrs. Turpin (whose hypocrisy is somewhat obvious to the attentive readers since the beginning of the story) only seems to suggest that she is not the only person guilty of phoniness or of being prejudiced and hypocritical. Mrs. Turpin is not the only phony of the south, and if her behavior seems to be condoned by the rest of her community, then we must understand that it will also be imitated by most of the people in it.
          Mrs. Turpin is a classist by excellence, talking to the fellows in the doctor’s waiting room she deems decent and ignoring the few she rejects. In one of her internal monologues, she even admits to having spent hours before going to bed thinking about all the different classes and patting herself on the back and thanking Jesus for having put her in the position and social status she is.
          She has a different ending, however, than that of the grandmother. O’Connor kills the grandmother off and all of her family almost mercilessly, as if the grandmother didn’t even deserve to live. It seemed to almost accentuate the fact that she was so rotten that even innocent people had to die because of her.  But Mrs. Turpin is, surprisingly, saved from a similar kind of fate. Some time after the crazed girl attacks Mrs. Turpin and acts as the catalyst of her inner revelation, she has a vision of all the niggers and white trash and basically all the people she hates or considers inferior marching up jovially towards heaven. They are at the front of the line, and the people like her are at the back. It is through this vision, through this realization of her make-believe superiority, that O’Connor indirectly alludes to the breaking down of Mrs. Turpin’s classism and judgments and to the birth of, if maybe not social sensibility, at least of the beginnings of one. O’Connor saves Mrs. Turpin through grace, even though she doesn’t deserve it. She saves her from a painful fate and rather grants her a revelation and the option to change, to be better. By doing so she is also indirectly exposing another basic teaching of the Christian doctrine, Christ’s grace towards the undeserving humanity, using Mrs. Turpin as a metaphor for all of mankind.
          The story ends here, and we can speculate whether or not Mrs. Turpin decided to change after her revelation, but the important fact remains that O’Connor demonstrates in ¨Revelation¨ that she is not completely hopeless regarding the issue of social behavior and prejudices. She writes such stories for the sake of social critique, but also because she wishes to expose the wrongdoings of a group of people so they may open their eyes and become better because of it. Even people like Mrs. Turpin have the option of changing for the better, and this is what O’Connor truly desired readers to realize from her stories, that not everything is lost, that there is still a bright future is you will it to be so.

Man vs. God in Philip Pullman´s ¨His dark materials¨.

     In Phillip Pullman’s ¨His dark materials¨ the idea of ‘metaphysical rebellion’ is introduced. Metaphysical rebellion is not so much a belief system as it is a way of life. It is not atheistic because it recognizes the existence of a god; it is not anti-religious because it religious truths and dangers. It acknowledges the existence of god as the ultimate tyrant, a being so selfish who has created everything for his own glory and not because he wanted to genuinely give life to other beings.
     The main characters, Lyra and William seek to destroy god the tyrant and supplant his kingdom of corrupted ruling with the true kingdom of heaven, a heaven whose communion with individuals with individuals in their maximum expression of goodness is its purpose and where no one is obligated to ‘pour forth praise’ upon a selfish god.
     Philip Pullman rewrites the story of the fall. According to his version, Adam and Eve were first created to act as ‘pets’ of god. As long as they didn’t think for themselves or obey god’s exact commandments, they were allowed in paradise or in the garden of innocence. He called this state ¨childish innocence¨, when Adam and Eve were good because they had never been put to any test and because they were as children under the wings of an over protective, overzealous parent. When Lucifer came along in the form of a snake, he acted not as a deceiver but as a ¨bringer of light¨ (which is what his name literally means) to illuminate the minds of Adam and Eve and bring them the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve now enter it into the second stage, which is ¨experience¨. They start to grow, like a child grows into manhood, through their own mistakes and experiences.
     The selfish god grows angry because his pets no longer want to give him praise, and so he banished them from paradise and into earth, the realm of experience. On earth, the descendants of Adam and Eve grow from childhood to adulthood and create the sciences, arts and philosophies, all in an attempt to expand human consciousness. The tyrant, god, grows angry and wishes to punish them and put them down, wishes for them to remain in ignorance and not to grow for themselves. This growth, this experience, is deemed evil and malevolent, but humans rebel against his suppression and look to dethrone the tyrant of tyrants; the god of gods.
     In the end, Lyra and William prevail and the god is dethroned in an epic battle between the forces of good (fallen angels who have grown a mind of their own, humans, etc.) and of evil (god and his minons) and yields his throne to the humans, which begin an age of enlightenment and true civilization. Humans enter the third and most sacred stage; the ¨higher innocence¨, which is goodness or innocence that is gained by working at it and by striving toward it. The ¨higher innocence¨ is different from the first stage, ¨childish innocence¨; which is goodness with a lack of experience and therefore not as valuable or worthy.
     The book ends on a high note, with the victory of man over the image of god as a tyrant and as the ultimate oppressor. On another article, Pullman* states that if man and woman would have their head in the right place, there would be temples dedicated to Eve instead of to Mary.

*Although his idea of metaphysical rebellion (not really his idea for it can be traced back to other more ancient sources) is interesting, Pullman declares himself to be an atheist.

The difference between ¨Oedipus Rex¨ by Sophocles and The Classic Greek Myths

     Thebes, the city where Oedipus was king in Sophocle’s play ¨Oedipus Rex¨ was originally named Cadmeia, after its founder, Cadmus. He was cursed by the war god Ares because he killed the dragon that guarded the spring of dirce, a spring with pure waters which was sacred to Ares. Punishment was brought upon him due to the defilement of the sacred spring, and thus he had to serve Ares for eight years. After these eight years passed, Cadmus is said-according to myth- to have wooed Ares and Aphrodite’s daughter Harmonia. Although many gods honored this match, some thought it improper and highly disrespectful to have a daughter of gods marry a mortal, specially one who had defiled the spring of dirce. That is why among the many wedding presents Harmonia and Cadmus received, one was a cursed necklace which would prove to be plagued with tragic happenings that would affect all of his descendants.
     Laius was a direct descendant from Cadmus. He met with his ruin when he was told by the oracle not to engender a child with his wife, Jocasta, because such child would eventually kill him and marry Jocasta, his own mother. Such curse came upon him when in a drunken rage Laius raped a child. Because he raped a child, his own child will kill him. He brought the curse under himself when, in another drunken rage, Laius then raped his wife, Jocasta, and impregnated her. This is where Oedipus comes into play. The myth of Oedipus happens almost exactly as Sophocles wrote, except that Sophocles doesn’t go into details about the murder of Laius. Oedipus unknowingly killed his own father when in a prideful rage he refused to let another man walk upon a bridge (a sign of respect and social superiority) before him. It was his pride that led him to assault and kill, not any god’s maliciousness.
     What the myths and the play have in common is that both play out the same way and both end the same way. The myth mentions that Oedipus killed his father due to his excessive pride, but the play fails to stress this point or purposely ignores it.
Through the voices of the characters Sophocles tries to show the audience that fate was in the hands of the gods and it was due to their own maliciousness that Oedipus killed his father and married his own mother and that their whole family was cursed. The whole myth of the curse in the house of Cadmus, however, shows that not only the gods have nothing to do with the actions taken by mortals (other than that of warning them of what will come as the oracle did Laius) but the mortals themselves are wholly to be blamed for their downfall due to their particular defects. Cadmus was cursed because he defiled a spring that he knew was sacred to the gods in an act of excessive arrogance; Laius was a drunk who raped a child and his own wife even after he was told what would happen if he engendered a child with Jocasta, and Oedipus’s downfall came because of his pride and rashness. The descendants of Cadmus are said to be cursed but they are cursed by their own defects, not due to some malicious or evil plan webbed by the gods. This is the main difference between the classic Greek myths and Sophocles’ apparent intent while writing the play

The National Union and Shakesepare’s viewpoint

     The British nation was undergoing a political transformation during the first decade of the seventeenth century. This transformation began with the Union of the Crowns of 1603; A union that initiated a reconsideration of national identity and a new surfacing passionate patriotism only all the more complicated by ¨the residual hostility and prejudice of the two nations (Scotland and England) towards each other¨ (Bruce Calloway, The Union of England and Scotland). Shakespeare’s Macbeth which was thought to have been written around 1606 emerged during a critical time of the political transformations. All in all, Macbeth presents itself through the perspective of an English play on any particular position on the Anglo-Saxon politics of the time. It is written through the eyes of an Englishman and so within the play are impregnated the views of the English towards the Scottish in the time of Union.
     In December 1604 there was a parliamentary commission comprised of both English and Scottish representatives that proposed that the Union of the Crowns be converted into a national union. One of the tracts of the proposal on behalf of the English was that if there was to be any union between the two nations at all that it must be done with integrity and wholly, and the Scottish sociopolitical institutions who held this view of English superiority to the Scottish constructed histories centered on acts of homage by Scottish kings to England.
     The Scottish maintained a different view. They argued for a system of equality between the people of the two nations and proposed that the religious and legal system be maintained separately within each kingdom. The English and Scottish men who supported King James VI argued that the Union, according to its divine origin, has ¨the need for a unity in the hearts and minds of the two peoples¨ (Galloway, The Union). The parliament was set to discuss these and other proposals in early 1605, but was deferred until November 1606.
     Macbeth was written during this period of deferment, during this gap of crystallization of potential policies and the debate on their acceptability. Grace Tiffany says that Macbeth supports the mythology and belief of English superiority crafted and promoted by James VI. She states that the ¨play was diplomatically designed to reflect James’s own carefully fashioned public image: that of an English ¨Duncan¨ ¨ (Grace Tiffany, Macbeth, Paternity and the Anglicization of James I). What is interesting to note is that the acquisition of theaters by play writers had the effect of ¨reducing the playing company’s dependence upon their aristocratic sponsors… so freeing them to address a variety of topics in an objective spirit¨ (Paul Yachnin, Stage-Wrights). Shakespeare being one of these play writers was free to address his opinions on the national union between the English and Scottish courts and of the proposals to the parliament. Many of these opinions or perspectives are expressed through the character of his play, through Macbeth himself.
     The various discourses of the murderous Macbeth seem to suggest that the English opinion of the Scots, that or barbarous, disloyal and rebellious people. Macbeth, the barbarous king, is ultimately defeated by Malcolm, a Scot whose actions seem to imply consent to English ruling superiority. The fact that Macbeth was murdered by another Scot who was subdued by the beliefs of English hegemony imply Shakespeare’s own views about Scotland’s barbaric impulses needing to be contained by England’s civilizing forces.
     It is right for these rebellious, tyrannous Scottish monarchs such as Macbeth to be defeated justly in battle and to be the example to other barbaric Scots to adhere to the relationship of homage toward England that they would otherwise not adhere to.
     Macbeth’s murder of the peaceful, kind and fair Duncan can be seen as extended representations of the violent nature of the Scots and of the deeds they could be capable of doing. Duncan is represented under fair light, and if we are to believe that he is in some way a character based on James VI, we must suppose it is only to flatter James VI and to put the Englishmen under good light as king and gentlemanly as opposed to the murderous Scottish.
     Macbeth has a conscience, but he can easily turn on it. He outlines his various duties to Duncan and even internally compliments him on his kind disposition: ¨He’s here in double trust/ First, as I am his kinsman and his subject ,/ Strong  both against the deed; then as his host,/ Who should against his murderer shut the door/ Not bear the knife myself¨ (Shakespeare, Macbeth, act 1, scene vii). And yet Macbeth does bear the knife himself, and murders Duncan in a barbaric and cowardly way; stabbing him to death in his defenseless, tranquil sleep.
     Macbeth’s violence and rejection of ¨legitimate¨ authority is customary of many Elizabethan plays, where they often present the Scottish under barbaric lights and as inferior in civil ways as those of the English. It is because of this violent nature that English superiority must, therefore, be accentuated within the national union. This is a typical case where it becomes a matter of debate whether the political undergoing of the time was the cause of such beliefs and whether culture seeped in to the playwrights to express the opinions of people (in this case, the English) or whether it was the single perspective of one such play writer who heavily influenced the mindset of a culture. I tend to prefer the former option in this specific case.
     When Macbeth cries out ¨I have no spur/ to prick the sides of my intent, but only/ Vaulting ambition, which o’erlaps itself/ And falls on the other¨ (Act 1, scene vii) he is claiming himself to be an overly ambitious violent man who will stop at nothing to fulfill his desires of power. His words contain ¨all the associations of contemporary anxiety about the ambitious Scots who would, through nefarious or fraudulent means, acquire power from those who ¨rightfully¨ held it¨ (Sharon Alker and Holly Faith Nelson, Macbeth the Jacobean Scot and the politics of the Union). Shakespeare created Macbeth therefore, to embody the past and present anxieties about the Scottish. His views are parallel to those of most English tracts of the Union, affirming English superiority and accusing the Scottish of encroaching on the properties of others and requiring ¨containment within an appropriate hierarchical scheme¨ (Alker and Nelson, The Jacobean Scot).
     The national union heavily influenced Shakespeare’s Macbeth, due to the period and time it was written it. The character Macbeth is the embodiment of all that the English see as inferior in the Scottish: violent nature, uncivilized thoughts, and vaulting ambition. Most of the plays of that time reflected this viewpoint and through art and culture the people were influenced in their manner of thinking. Macbeth is justly killed in battle by Malcolm at the end of the play, and this victory can be seen as the overpowering of civilized Scottish men who do not undermine ¨legitimate¨ authority over the barbaric, rebellious Scots. While Macbeth, who was the rebel, sought power through evil, distorted and unjust means; Malcolm sought not power for himself but for the restoration of the justice that had been robbed by Macbeth’s tyrannous rule, and did so justly, in a fair battle.  Shakespeare expresses his perspective on the national union and affirms his beliefs in English superiority most of all in this last scene, where his character is justly defeated and peace is restored at last.