Exam Preparation: Quotes

**MACBETH**


“I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only, vaulting ambition which o’erlaps it’s self. “

“Stars hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires”

“I am in blood step’d in so far, that returning were as tedious as to go’er”

“Will all great neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand”

“A dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?”

“Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow”

“Out out brief candle, I am but a walking shadow”

Unfamiliar Text: Practice 2

TEXT: You’re 100% Wrong About… Seafood

The text “You’re 100% Wrong About… Seafood” is about a person who despises seafood, and uses hyperbole as the main language feature to convey his perspective towards the food. Hyperbole is a term where over-exaggeration is used, mainly to emphasise a point. “I have, I really have, it’s just that it tastes, well, disgusting. Actually that doesn’t quite go far enough, it also smells pretty disgusting too, even from an impressive distance” As seen in this quote the writer uses hyperbole to over exaggerate his hatred towards seafood which helps convey the idea that he really dislikes it. The writer shows that he doesn’t even want to be near seafood. Alan Perrott, the writer of this text, wishes that he liked seafood as it would place him in a more comfortable place in society. “But the thing is that I really wished I liked it, loved it even, because life would be so much easier and I wouldn’t have to have the same old conversation every time I turned down a prawn cocktail.” Alan shows in this quote that he would feel more at ease if he liked seafood. Most other people like seafood, so if he liked it he believed he would fit in more.

Unfamiliar Text: Practice 1

TEXT: More Than Just A Place To Sleep

This text published in 2016 by Lauren Davidson is an article about a museum exhibit featuring 26 different teenage bedrooms. This article analysis how teenagers are more connected to their room than in the past, and the writer uses contrast and direct quotes to get across this idea. The main contrast in this article is between how modern day teenagers perceive their bedrooms and how teenagers in the late 1900’s perceived their bedrooms. Lauren states in the article that over the past few decades the way teenagers use their own bedrooms has drastically changed. “One of the most notable differences between the life of teenagers today and that of their parents’ youth is the advent of social media” Social media is a new concept in society and has caused a lot of change, including teenagers lifestyles.

Exam Preparation:

Unfamiliar Texts:

Three aspects that must be in paragraph(s):

  • At beginning describe the text as a whole
  • Use 2-3 quotes throughout the paragraph(s) and describe each one (Language feature used, meaning, ect:)
  • Use a chosen language feature to relate to the texts meaning

Essay:

Three aspects that must be in essay: Macbeth

  • First/Second sentence of essay must contain first & second parts of the question
  • Minimum of 3 quotes used throughout the essay, all MUST be described
  • Conclusion will likely be similar to significant connections conclusion

Exam Preparation: Feedback

  1. Describe a conflict in the text. Explain how the conflict helped you understand human nature.

INTRO: Macbeth is a play that resolves around a character who has an internal conflict between his own ambition and morality through the entire play. His name is Macbeth and he was once a respected warrior but due to his ambition, he made irrational choices that ultimately led him to losing both his mind and humanity. The inner conflicts in Macbeth’s mind shows us that human nature is complex and if our emotions are left unbalanced, we can be led to dark places. As the play progresses Macbeth continues to go in a downward spiral until coming to his demise at the end of the play. His downfall happened primarily because of the conflict between his morals and ambition. The three witches, the dagger and the apparitions were events that Macbeth came across and they all contributed towards Macbeth’s conflict of ambition and morality.

PARAGRAPH 1: The witches were the first phenomenon to come up in the play. Macbeth stumbled upon these three witches and they foretold his future of him becoming king. Macbeth became blinded by the idea of power & riches. His ambition for it grew and his human integrity shrunk. “Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires” This quote shows that Macbeth wants to kill King Duncan so he can go to power, he understands that in doing so he would be a bad person, he hopes that no one finds out about his villainous plans. During this point in the play his inner conflicts are to whether he should go along with murdering Duncan or not.

PARAGRAPH 2: He continues to go along with his plan of murdering Duncan. Moments before a dagger appears. This dagger is a hallucinatory object which reinforces his conflict between his ambition and human integrity. “A dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?” Macbeth is saying that he believes he is hallucinating because of the conflict and stress in his mind. Not only does the dagger symbolise the internal conflicts in Macbeth but it also symbolises betrayal. Macbeth and duncan are cousins. Macbeth’s ambition took over & he went on to murder Duncan to take his place as king. When he became king he was merely unsatisfied. “Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown” This quote identifies that although Macbeth achieved his desire of becoming king, he isn’t happy. This directly relates to the understanding of human nature. We as humans will never be satisfied with the goals we accomplish. This is because we are built to evolve thus we must always have a goal to strive towards. In this case Macbeth achieved becoming king but he isn’t satisfied as he is guilty that he killed a man for power and riches and more problems have arisen due to his choice of commiting murder.

CONCLUSION: The beginning of Macbeth’s downfall was in the three witches. They were the cause of his conflict of ambition and morality which led him on to making little-thought decisions. This play was a series of chained reactions which ultimately caused his death at the end. The play showed that when your humanity and morality is outweighed by your intentions you can lose your sanity. Human nature is very unique as our brains are complex thus we can quite easily distort ourselves by having conflictions in our heads.

40mins.

Significant Connections: Ambition

Ambition is a drive that can be used in multiple ways, for better or worse. Though it requires a balance between intention and morality. If one outweighs the other, negative consequences will arise. In the topics I’ll be talking about: The play Macbeth, the poem Ozymandias, the show Arrow and the movie Gattaca all have ambition as the central theme. Each topic has a different perspective on the idea of ambition and shows us the differing ways it can affect us. Ambition is a drive that, if used correctly, can help us achieve our greatest goals. 

Macbeth, a play created 400 years ago shows us that ambition can have negative side effects. In the beginning Macbeth is a fearless warrior but due to his ambition for power and riches, he makes irrational decisions which diminishes him into a cowardly man of despair. One of the symbols used to convey ambition is a dagger. This dagger symbolizes betrayal moments before Macbeth kills king Duncan. It made him second guess his intentions. However his intention outbalanced his morality and he proceeded to murder Duncan for power and riches. In the end he came to regret the actions he took. He found it wasn’t worth it. Every choice he made in the play was based on ambition and they led him to his own demise.

Using ambition to become king was what Macbeth did, Ozymandias took it a step further. This poem was written 200 years ago and is about a traveller who describes a statue he saw in a desert. The statue represents Ozymandias who was once a king. He had the passion, the ambition to become “King of Kings’ ‘ He wanted his name and legacy to be remembered throughout history but that did not come to be. All that Ozymandias became was a broken statue in the middle of a desert. The poem conveys that it doesn’t matter how ambitious you are, what motives you have, you will inevitably come to nothing. The symbol used to emphasize this idea is where the statue is located: alone in a desert. It symbolises that Ozymandias is forgotten, and his legacy disintegrated into nothing. The time you have on Earth is limited so choose carefully what you want to do with it.

Ozymandias didn’t believe that and nor did Prometheus. Adrien Chase, who is Prometheus, is the villain in season 5 of the tv show Arrow. Arrow is about a billionaire known as Oliver Queen who has the secret identity of an archer. Oliver killed Adrien’s father 4 years prior which set him out on the ultimate quest of vengeance. Adrien created an ambition driven from hate. It was so powerful he created a master plan on torturing Oliver. He spent years perfecting it. He physically and mentally tortured Oliver, used his family against him and had a backup plan for everything. Adrien’s goal was to get Oliver to confess he kills for fun and realise he is actually the bad guy. Unlike most villains in the movie world, Prometheus bet the hero. Adrien’s ambition to destroy Oliver was unmatched. In the end Prometheus shot himself to get further into Oliver’s head mentally. He invested all of his life’s means into proving Oliver that he is a bad person. The season showed Adrien’s conflict of ambition through the battles that happened between him and Oliver. They were both archers which made it look like Adrien was fighting himself, or in a deeper manner, he was fighting his morality. Adrien threw away everything to prove his point to Oliver, he threw away his humanity. Was that worth it?

In those 3 topics their intentions outweighed their moralities and the characters put their time into the wrong things. Vincent doesn’t do that in the movie Gattaca. This 1997 film is set in the future where your genetics determine your rights in society. The main character, Vincent, is born without genetic selection which is uncommon in the future. For all his life he had the ambition to leave Earth and become a space navigator. He had multiple flaws in his genetics so it was practically impossible for him to achieve his goal. However he does achieve his dream of going into space. All because of his ambition to do so. He knew it was his purpose. Symbols for ambition came up all through the film. Skylights were one of the recurring symbols. Sylights are ceiling windows which aim up at the sky. The skylights symbolise Vincent’s ambition to go up to space. Gattaca reflects that a person’s worth is no greater than their ambitions. You can only achieve as high as the goal you’ve set and Gattaca shows that through the film.

Macbeth, Ozymandias, Arrow and Gattaca all conveyed ambition in different ways. It is a versatile emotion that can have negative or positive effects. Literature has evolved over centuries but the idea of ambition has remained constant. The topics have ambition as the central theme and makes us more aware that there is a balance that is needed between Intention and morality.

Ozymandias:

PERSONAL RESPONSE: It appears to be set to the middle-aged, medieval time. It set a cold, wintery, lost mood. I was quite curious about the traveller. I question what his motives are. This small piece doesn’t have much to offer so I couldn’t come to any conclusions. Maybe the traveller was on a quest in search for a king, as said in the second piece.

MEANINGS:  

Antique = A collectable object

Visage = A person’s facial features/expressions

NOTICE STRUCTURE: The beginning mentions a traveller, this character could become more important. A variety of descriptive words are used to emphasize the setting & characters. All of the lines are in an iambic pentameter rhythm apart from the first line, having elelevan syllables as opposed to ten. The whole sonnet has an alternating rhyme (ABAB, CDCD)

Sonnet: 1 (And only 1)

I sit down on the chair, looking afar

Reflecting back to a previous time

Wondering why I stole that mans car

Even though It wasn’t much of a crime

Now I am being being convicted, I’m eighteen.

All of these years, what can I blame?

I should have thought it through, this was unseen

Now I enter a new age, with faulty fame

Past mistakes have come back to haunt me

Nowadays my parents don’t come to visit

If only they knew what I can see

Everything aside, I have been explicit

*unfinished*

Gattaca: Modernism Connection

The 1997 film Gattaca is a movie based in the future. It was written and directed by Andrew Niccol and the choices he made throughout the movie can relate to the idea of modernism. The film is based on the idea of genetic selection or “eugenics” This movie defines individuals by their genes. Not what race or gender they are but the strength of their genes. In Gattaca, the setting the director chose is relatively bland. There is rational use of colours and the people themselves do not have much personality. This directly relates to the idea of modernism. Modernism is a genre that comes in many forms including architecture. Modernist architecture is houses that are built with extreme simplicity whilst being functional. Modernist architecture directly relates to this idea of genetic selection in Gattaca because the society only appeals to those with good strong genetics. They are built nearly perfectly before even being born. These people with strong genes all have similar personalities, there isn’t much variation between characters. This reflects modernist architecture to a high degree. Like with modernist homes, the people with selected genes all lack their own character, this is the case with modernist architecture. Modernist homes are all very functional however they lack character.