Republic of Albania

Univesity “Aleksandër Moisiu’’ Durrës

Faculty of Education
Branch: German-English
Course: British Literature I

Coursework
Second semester

Topic: Analyze of Macbeth and Robinson Crusoe.

Worked by: Eriola Xhafa.
Accepted by: Dr. Marsela Turku.
The tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare

 The Tragedy of Macbeth begins with the brief appearance of a trio of witches and then moves to a military camp,
where the Scottish King Duncan hears the news that his generals, Macbeth and Banquo, have defeated two separate
invading armies. Macbeth and Banquo encounter the witches as they cross a moor. The witches prophesy that
Macbeth will be made thane of Cawdor and eventually King of Scotland. They also prophesy that Macbeth’s
companion, Banquo, will beget a line of Scottish kings, although Banquo will never be king himself.
 Macbeth and Banquo treat their prophecies skeptically until some of King Duncan’s men come to thank the two
generals for their victories in battle and to tell Macbeth that he has indeed been named thane of Cawdor. Macbeth
writes ahead to his wife, Lady Macbeth, telling her all that has happened.
 Lady Macbeth desires the kingship for him and wants him to murder Duncan in order to obtain it. When Macbeth
arrives at Inverness, she persuades him to kill the king that night. He and Lady Macbeth plan to get Duncan’s two
chamberlains drunk so they will black out; the next morning they will blame the murder on the chamberlains, who
will be defenseless, as they will remember nothing. While Duncan is asleep, Macbeth stabs him. When Duncan’s
death is discovered the next morning, Macbeth kills the chamberlains and easily assumes the kingship. Duncan’s
sons Malcolm and Donalbain flee to England and Ireland, respectively, fearing that whoever killed Duncan desires
their demise as well.
 Fearful of the witches’ prophecy that Banquo’s heirs will seize the throne, Macbeth hires a group of murderers to kill Banquo and his son
Fleance. They ambush Banquo, but they fail to kill Fleance, who escapes into the night. Macbeth fears that his power remains insecure.
At the feast that night, Banquo’s ghost visits Macbeth. When he sees the ghost, Macbeth raves fearfully, startling his guests, who include
most of the great Scottish nobility. Lady Macbeth tries to neutralize the damage, but Macbeth’s kingship incites increasing resistance
from his nobles and subjects.
Frightened, Macbeth goes to visit the witches. There, they show him further prophecies: he must beware of Macduff, a Scottish nobleman
who opposed Macbeth’s accession to the throne; he is incapable of being harmed by any man born of woman; and he will be safe until
Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Castle. Macbeth is relieved and feels secure, because he knows that all men are born of women and
that forests cannot move. Macbeth orders that Macduff’s castle be seized and he’s family execution after he flied to England.
After that, Macduff wants revenge. Macduff joins Prince Malcolm’s army to challenge Macbeth’s forces. The invasion has the support of
the Scottish nobles, who are frightened by Macbeth’s tyrannical and murderous behavior.
Lady Macbeth kills herself, and this news comes to Macbeth before opponents arrive, causing him a deep and pessimistic despair.
Macbeth awaits the English and fortifies Dunsinane, certain that the witches’ prophecies guarantee his invincibility. He is frightened,
when he learns that the English army is advancing on Dunsinane shielded with boughs cut from Birnam Wood. So, the half of the
witches’ prophecy is fulfilling.
In the battle the English forces gradually overwhelm his army and castle. On the battlefield, Macbeth encounters the vengeful Macduff,
who declares that he was not “of woman born” but was instead “untimely ripped” from his mother’s womb. Macbeth continues to fight
until Macduff kills and beheads him. Malcolm, now the King of Scotland, declares his benevolent intentions for the country and invites
all to see him crowned at Scone.
Themes
 One of the strongest themes in Macbeth is ambition and the destruction that can happen when hubris and greed for
power go unchecked.
 When Macbeth realizes that one of the witches’ prophesies has come true (he has become ‘Thane of Cawdor’, a title
of Scottish nobility) he immediately begins to wonder whether it could be true that he will become king. The
eagerness with which he speaks these words suggest his ambition is front of mind, even though he understands he
will need to commit violent acts in order to become king – thoughts which at this point he seems to refuse to
consider acting upon:
“Two truths are told

As happy prologues to the swelling act

Of th’imperial theme”

(Act 1, Scene 3)

 Macbeth goes on to describes his wish to become king as ‘black and deep desires’, which suggests he is struggling
with the acts he will need to undertake to fulfill his ambition:
“The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step

On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap,

For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;

Let not light see my black and deep desires.

The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be

Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.”

(Act 1, Scene 4)
 Motifs & Symbols

 Motif: Prophecy.
 One of the most powerful motifs in the play is the prediction of the witches. The witches appear in the first act and
then in the third and last. They make a prediction that Macbeth shall be the king, and that his wife will be the queen.
All the actions of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are based on these predictions. Whatever action they take, its basis is
the same prediction, and its attendant features that they will have to do nothing.
 Symbols: Blood
 Blood is everywhere in Macbeth, beginning with the opening battle between the Scots and the Norwegian invaders,
in Act 1, scene 2. Also, blood comes to symbolize Macbeths and Lady Macbeth’s guilt, and they begin to feel that
their crimes have stained them in a way that cannot be washed clean. “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this
blood / Clean from my hand?”
Protagonist & Antagonist

 Protagonist:
 Macbeth is the protagonist of the play, even though he is not a good or sympathetic character. His ambition to be
king at any cost drives the action of the play. From the beginning of the play, Macbeth is ambitious; nothing that
happens to him, up to and including the death of his wife, can thwart him in his quest. Although Macbeth achieves
his goal of becoming king, his ambition is never fully satisfied, as he spends the remainder of the play trying to
defend his throne. At the end of the play Macbeth learns the futility of his quest as he understands the true meaning
of the Witches’ prophecies. But his knowledge comes too late for him to correct the error of his ways, and at the
price of everyone he loves, as well as his kingdom.
 Antagonist:
 Nearly every other character serves as Macbeth’s antagonist. Banquo, who is ambitious but knows how to check his
ambition, threatens Macbeth with his nobility and belief that time will bring his children to the throne. Duncan
opposes Macbeth by holding the throne Macbeth desperately wants. Malcolm, Siward, Macduff and the other nobles
actively work against Macbeth, opposing his desire to be and stay king.
 Setting:
 Shakespeare's Macbeth is set mainly in various Scottish locations, with just one scene set in England, at the King'
palace.
 Genre:
 Tragedy. Macbeth represents a classic tragedy in that its protagonist travels down a dark path of treachery and
violence that inevitably leads to his own downfall and death.
 Style:
 Macbeth is, for the most part, written in blank verse. The basic unit of blank verse is a line in iambic pentameter
without a rhyme scheme but, increasingly in his plays, Shakespeare's use of the line and the number of its syllables
and stresses became freer.
 Point of View:
 The point of view of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" is, for the audience, third-person objective: The viewers are
outside observers of the story.
 Tone:
 “Macbeth” is a tragedy, so its tone is predominantly dark, elegiac and depressing. “Blood will have blood”, as
Shakespeare wrote in Act III, Scene IV of the play, foreshadows the series of murders taking place, which, as a
result, stir bleak and sinister feelings among the readers.
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
 Robinson Crusoe, as a young and impulsive wanderer, defied his parents and went to sea. He was involved in a series of
violent storms at sea and was warned by the captain that he should not be a seafaring man. Ashamed to go home, Crusoe
boarded another ship and returned from a successful trip to Africa. Taking off again, Crusoe met with bad luck and was taken
prisoner in Sallee. His captors sent Crusoe out to fish, and he used this to his advantage and escaped, along with a slave.
 He was rescued by a Portuguese ship and started a new adventure. He landed in Brazil, and, after some time, he became the
owner of a sugar plantation. Hoping to increase his wealth by buying slaves, he aligned himself with other planters and
undertook a trip to Africa in order to bring back a shipload of slaves. After surviving a storm, Crusoe and the others were
shipwrecked. He was thrown upon shore only to discover that he was the sole survivor of the wreck.
 Crusoe made immediate plans for food, and then shelter, to protect himself from wild animals. He brought as many things as
possible from the wrecked ship, things that would be useful later to him. In addition, he began to develop talents that he had
never used in order to provide himself with necessities. Cut off from the company of men, he began to communicate with God,
thus beginning the first part of his religious conversion. To keep his sanity and to entertain himself, he began a journal. In the
journal, he recorded every task that he performed each day since he had been marooned.
 As time passed, Crusoe became a skilled craftsman. He also learned about farming, as a result of some seeds which he brought
with him. An illness prompted some prophetic dreams, and Crusoe began to reappraise his duty to God. Crusoe explored his
island and discovered another part of the island much richer and more fertile, and he built a summer home there.
 One of the first tasks he undertook was to build himself a canoe in case an escape became possible, but the canoe was too
heavy to get to the water. He then constructed a small boat and journeyed around the island. Crusoe reflected on his earlier,
wicked life, disobeying his parents, and wondered if it might be related to his isolation on this island.
 After spending about fifteen years on the island, Crusoe found a man's naked footprint, and he was sorely beset by
apprehensions, which kept him awake many nights.
 Later, Crusoe saw a ship in distress, but everyone was already drowned on the ship and Crusoe remained companionless.
However, he was able to take many provisions from this newly wrecked ship. Sometime later, cannibals landed on the island
and a victim escaped. Crusoe saved his life, named him Friday, and taught him English. Friday soon became Crusoe's humble
and devoted slave.
 Crusoe and Friday made plans to leave the island and, accordingly, they built another boat. Crusoe also undertook Friday's
religious education, converting the savage into a Protestant. Their voyage was postponed due to the return of the savages. This
time it was necessary to attack the cannibals in order to save two prisoners since one was a white man. The white man was a
Spaniard and the other was Friday's father. Later the four of them planned a voyage to the mainland to rescue sixteen
compatriots of the Spaniard. First, however, they built up their food supply to assure enough food for the extra people. Crusoe
and Friday agreed to wait on the island while the Spaniard and Friday's father brought back the other men.
 A week later, they spied a ship but they quickly learned that there had been a mutiny on board. By devious means, Crusoe and
Friday rescued the captain and two other men, and after much scheming, regained control of the ship. The grateful captain gave
Crusoe many gifts and took him and Friday back to England. Some of the rebel crewmen were left marooned on the island.
 Crusoe returned to England and found that in his absence he had become a wealthy man. After going to Lisbon to handle some
of his affairs, Crusoe began an overland journey back to England. Crusoe and his company encountered many hardships in
crossing the mountains, but they finally arrived safely in England. Crusoe sold his plantation in Brazil for a good price,
married, and had three children. Finally, however, he was persuaded to go on yet another voyage, and he visited his old island,
where there were promises of new adventures to be found in a later account.
Theme: The Importance of Self-Awareness

 Crusoe’s arrival on the island does not make him revert to a brute existence controlled by animal instincts, and, unlike animals,
he remains conscious of himself at all times. Indeed, his island existence actually deepens his self-awareness as he withdraws
from the external social world and turns inward. The idea that the individual must keep a careful reckoning of the state of his
own soul is a key point in the Presbyterian doctrine that Defoe took seriously all his life. We see that in his normal day-to-day
activities, Crusoe keeps accounts of himself enthusiastically and in various ways. For example, it is significant that Crusoe’s
makeshift calendar does not simply mark the passing of days, but instead more egocentrically marks the days he has spent on
the island: it is about him, a sort of self-conscious or autobiographical calendar with him at its center. Similarly, Crusoe
obsessively keeps a journal to record his daily activities, even when they amount to nothing more than finding a few pieces of
wood on the beach or waiting inside while it rains. Crusoe feels the importance of staying aware of his situation at all times.
We can also sense Crusoe’s impulse toward self-awareness in the fact that he teaches his parrot to say the words, “Poor Robin
Crusoe. . . . Where have you been?” This sort of self-examining thought is natural for anyone alone on a desert island, but it is
given a strange intensity when we recall that Crusoe has spent months teaching the bird to say it back to him. Crusoe teaches
nature itself to voice his own self-awareness.
Motifs & Symbol

 Motifs: Eating
 One of Crusoe’s first concerns after his shipwreck is his food supply. Even while he is still wet from the sea in Chapter V, he frets
about not having “anything to eat or drink to comfort me.” He soon provides himself with food, and indeed each new edible item
marks a new stage in his mastery of the island, so that his food supply becomes a symbol of his survival. His securing of goat meat
staves off immediate starvation, and his discovery of grain is viewed as a miracle, like manna from heaven. His cultivation of raisins,
almost a luxury food for Crusoe, marks a new comfortable period in his island existence. In a way, these images of eating convey
Crusoe’s ability to integrate the island into his life, just as food is integrated into the body to let the organism grow and prosper. But
no sooner does Crusoe master the art of eating than he begins to fear being eaten himself. The cannibals transform Crusoe from the
consumer into a potential object to be consumed. Life for Crusoe always illustrates this eat or be eaten philosophy, since even back
in Europe he is threatened by man-eating wolves. Eating is an image of existence itself, just as being eaten signifies death for
Crusoe.
 Symbol: The Footprint
 Crusoe’s shocking discovery of a single footprint on the sand in Chapter XVIII is one of the most famous moments in the novel, and
it symbolizes our hero’s conflicted feelings about human companionship. Crusoe has earlier confessed how much he misses
companionship, yet the evidence of a man on his island sends him into a panic. Immediately he interprets the footprint negatively, as
the print of the devil or of an aggressor. He never for a moment entertains hope that it could belong to an angel or another European
who could rescue or befriend him. This instinctively negative and fearful attitude toward others makes us consider the possibility
that Crusoe may not want to return to human society after all, and that the isolation he is experiencing may actually be his ideal state.
 Protagonist:
 Robinson is the protagonist and the narrator of the novel. He is individualistic, self-reliant, and adventurous. He continually
discounts the good advice and warnings of his parents and others, and boldly seeks to make his own life by going to sea.
 Antagonist:
 At the most simplistic level, Crusoe's antagonist is the series of calamities that befall him. He must overcome each of his trials
during the book in order to become successful and return to England.
 Setting:
 The Transatlantic. Crusoe begins his journey in September 1659 and travels to Africa, Brazil, and a lost island in the Atlantic.
He moves primarily through and around the Atlantic Ocean. In this sense, the setting of the novel is a transatlantic one.
 Genre:
 Adventure, historical fiction.
 Point of View:
 The point of view is called “first person” because Robinson Crusoe narrates the story and speaks about himself using first-
person pronouns, such as “I” and “me.” For instance, the book begins, “I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a
good family.” The term “limited” means that Crusoe, as a narrator, ...
 Tone:
 Crusoe's tone is mostly detached, meticulous, and objective. He displays little rhetorical grandeur and few poetic or colorful
turns of phrase. He generally avoids dramatic storytelling, preferring an inventorylike approach to the facts as they unfold.
 https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/macbeth/summary/
 https://nosweatshakespeare.com/quotes/plays/macbeth/ambition/
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 https://literarydevices.net/macbeth-motifs/
 https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/macbeth/symbols/
 https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/explain-briefly-antagonist-protagonist-macbeth-
 https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/robinson-crusoe/book-summary