help on Macbeth please

[enchanted rose]

What is the inciting incident?

The rising action?

The climax?

And the resolution in Macbeth?

Please help

please help

[Shakira]

What is the inciting incident?

The moment when Macbeth's eyes are opened to new possibilities, and how he indicates that he is thinking about attaining something new (like becoming the king!). Macbeth is startled at being called Thane of Cawdor and then King. Also the moment that he hears he has won the title of Thane of Cawdor (lines 104-117) is the inciting incident.

Rising action • Macbeth and Banquo’s encounter with the witches initiates both conflicts; The rising action is when some of the prophecies are coming true and Lady Macbeth’s speeches goad Macbeth into murdering Duncan and seizing the crown.

Climax • Macbeth’s murder of Duncan in Act II represents the point of no return, after which Macbeth is forced to continue butchering his subjects to avoid the consequences of his crime.

Falling action • Macbeth’s increasingly brutal murders (of Duncan’s servants, Banquo, Lady Macduff and her son); Macbeth’s second meeting with the witches; Macbeth’s final confrontation with Macduff and the opposing armies.

Foreshadowing • The bloody battle in Act I foreshadows the bloody murders later on; when Macbeth thinks he hears a voice while killing Duncan, it foreshadows the insomnia that plagues Macbeth and his wife; Macduff’s suspicions of Macbeth after Duncan’s murder foreshadow his later opposition to Macbeth; all of the witches’ prophecies foreshadow later events.

For more details you can check :

http://summarycentral.tripod.com/macbeth.htm

[matthewlha]

Wow. Is this okay? enchanted rose is obviously asking us to the the work on his/her assignment. enchanted rose: try thinking a little and having the guts to make a guess or two on your own. You'll find that the more you try that, the better you'll start getting at it. That's called getting smarter. Getting smarter is the point to education, which I'm presuming that you care something about, since you are obviously in the middle of it.
Have some faith in yourself and start the work yourself. Having others do the work for you is cheating, much like Macbeth cheats to become king. And look how he ends up. He signifies nothing.

[vili]

I actually have a somewhat different way of looking at Macbeth. For me, the Wyrd Sisters stand for the Fates (or rather the Germanic Norns), which in itself is not a very novel claim to make (not least because 'Wyrd sisters' as an expression stands for the Fates). However, if they indeed are the Norns, they control human destiny.

It seems to be that if you take this as your starting point for the play, you can rather easily argue for Macbeth's innocence: he is only fulfilling his teleologic purpose. He is not responsible for his acts. If you accept this view, the play then, rather than being about this murderous villain Macbeth, turns into a story about Macbeth's struggle when he comes to terms with his being only an actor on the stage with a script he cannot alter. As long as he is unaware that he is simply following his fate, he is doing fine. But he slowly comes to understand that he is not really responsible for his actions. And that's when his downfall occurs.

If you read Macbeth's famous "life's but a walking shadow" monologue with this in mind, it does make sense:

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word. 2375
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! 2380
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

This line of thought is, however, somewhat complicated with the inclusion of Hecate. Some have argued that the Hecate scenes are not Shakespeare's, but if you do take Hecate to be part of the play (and she is there, after all), it is a bit odd how she seems to be above the Fates.

In any case, there is obviously much more to this whole argument than the outline I have produced here, but I am not going to bore you with the details. My point mainly was that rather than copy-paste your homework from the web, it may sometimes be worth the while to actually think about the matters, yourself.

[matthewlha]

vili: I like your interpretation very much. I'd argue that Shakespeare encompasses all meanings; he is a universe entire. Sometimes in that universe a character can be both a villain and a victim.
I also see that you are a fan of Kurosawa. Me, too. Huge fan. His Throne of Blood is masterful. You have good taste.

[vili]

Yes, Kurosawa is a huge favourite of mine. Throne of Blood is indeed an exceptional adaptation of Macbeth, just like Ran brings King Lear on the big screen with amazing results.

[matthewlha]

Ran is my favorite movie, along with Psycho, of all time.
What I like best about Throne of Blood is how he reinterprets the central struggle. In Macbeth, one man upsets the natural order of things, and so it takes one man (his mirror image, Macduff) to set things straight. In Throne of Blood, Kurosawa does away with the Macduff character because it is the feudal system that has corrupted the man (hence the title), and so the system must be set right by the people. Such a radical reinterpretation of Shakespeare would seem to undercut the original text, but the contrast actually highlights the positive points about both.