Good People Doing Bad Things

The play Macbeth is a great example of people who are good doing things that are really bad. Macbeth was a goodhearted, trustworthy person until his wanting for the title of king and his wife's ambition took him over. A real life example of good people going bad was with Bill Clinton during his second presidential term.
President Clinton had previously been considered as one of the best presidents in American history; he created a national surplus out of a massive national debt, effectively minimized ethnic conflict in Africa, and created one of America's greatest economic situations in nearly 30 years. Then one day in 1998 towards the end of his second term the country would find out that Clinton had been involved in scandal. It was revealed to the country that Clinton had been having a private affair with an intern in his office named Monica Lewinsky, and then Clinton was charged with sexual misconduct by many people inside his administration (the most notable being Paula Jones) and brought to court.
In court he continually stated how he "never slept with that women," over and over again. Then as the case went on it was discovered that he had been lying the entire time; as a result of that he was charged with purgery, or lying under oath. This dramatically lower his public image with the American people and made some people begin to question him. This legal conflict nearly caused Clinton to lose his presidential status nearly 3 years before he was supposed to (which would have made him the first president to be actually impeached). However, he managed to get out of it because congress couldn't get enough votes to impeach him (this was probably because congress was heavily represented by democrats who wanted Clinton to remain in office). Clinton now had a scarred reputation and a loss of credibility in many ways, one such example was that he became the butt of many jokes on Saturday Night Live, and many other comedy shows. The rest of his term went by without much other conflict and he would leave office as scheduled in 2001, where he would be succeeded by George W. Bush, the son of Clinton's predecessor George H.W. Bush.
This type of thing was similar to Macbeth in the sense that both Clinton and Macbeth were both honest, hard working, trustworthy men who became victims to doing things that were morally wrong. Both made some bad decisions, tried to cover them up, and both got caught doing things wrong. Unfortunately for Macbeth, I don't think that he will get a congressional hearing and a fair trial for his actions, he will probably have to "learn" from his mistakes in a more severe, less humane way.

The Socratic Seminar

Today in class we had a socratic seminar; a socratic seminar for all of you who don't know is when a lot of people put their desks in a circle and talk about a topic. In this one the topic was the first 6 scenes in the Shakespearian play Macbeth. These seminars are a way for students in our class to boost their grades because all you have to do is talk and you get points that wind up shooting ones grade up by two or three points (trust me that is a lot). I wasn't in this one, but I had the very important job of observing while half the class talked, and talked, and talked more. My job as on observer was to take notes on what other people said while trying as hard as I could not to dose off, cause trust me when you have a class at 8:00 in the morning it is hard to be fully awake and attentive cause most people are still tired. Anyway, as I listened to the seminar I learned others opinions about the book, some I agreed with, and some I didn't. One of the main ideas and thoughts that I agreed with was said by a classmate, Steve. Steve said that Macbeth, like most Shakespearean plays are difficult to understand unless you really know a lot about the way Shakespeare writes. Another student in class, Jen, agreed and said how Shakespeare's plays were all written similarly in terms of grammar and language. Both of these things are things that I agree with because I have the same feelings about Shakespeare, his plays all seem similar and I can't understand any of them the first time I read them.
Macbeth is the type of Shakespearean play known as a tragedy (as pointed out by a very opinionated classmate Sean), this means that it has a darker mood and the protagonist usually dies. Many others agreed with this statement and went on to say how there were many symbols that indicated this mood. One of these as pointed out by nearly half the class that was in the seminar was how betrayal played a major role. For an example of this, Macbeth, the protagonist, winds up murdering his friend King Duncan, in an effort to become king.
All in all, most comments said were very generic comments that I generally agreed on, I didn't really disagree on much, the only thing that I didn't like was how someone (I forgot to write down who) said that fate didn't play a huge role in the character's lives. Contrary to that, if fate didn't play a huge role, than Macbeth wouldn't have listened to the three witches when they said that he would be king. However, he did listen and now the previous king is dead.
One of the most important comments I heard in the seminar was about Macbeth's very controlling wife, known as Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is a very powerful women, who likes to be in control at all times of Macbeth. She is the one who really persuaded Macbeth to murder King Duncan. Their marriage is a typical example of a relationship where the women is in control. I think that this is a major theme in the book, it would appear that the women have all the power, for example the most powerful and significant characters in this part of the book are the witches, who are of course women. Also, the person who persuades Macbeth to do evil things, such as murder, is his wife. A very hillarious comment made by one of my classmates Jen was how Lady Macbeth fit the boy code, or the code that men typically follow during their everyday lives.
The only thing that I want to know is who is the most powerful and influencial person in the book; I couldn't make this determination because the people in the seminar were split between the witches or "weird sisters" and Lady Macbeth (with one person saying the the most influential person was Macbeth because if he wasn't born than none of this would have happened; I found that comment funny).
The play Macbeth is definitely more interesting than I thought it would be and as we as a class get closer to the climax I feel that it will continue to get better still.
Finally a Shakespearean play that hasn't made me wanted to kill myself while I was reading it.