MYPNA_TE_G12_U3_web.pdf

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Comprehension Check

Complete the following items after you finish your first read. Review and clarify details

with your group.

from THE NAKED BABE AND THE CLOAK OF MANLINESS

1. According to Brooks, what is ironic about Macbeth’s returning to the Weird Sisters
   for answers?


2. In Brooks’s analysis, what are some of the things that the child symbolizes in Macbeth?


3. How does Brooks interpret the Weird Sisters’ last prophecy?

from MACBETH

1. How does Kermode define the “interim” of time in which much of Macbeth takes place?


2. What examples of “false antitheses,” or inaccurate opposites, does Kermode cite?


3. How does Kermode characterize the specific language patterns of Macbeth?


4. Notebook Confirm your understanding of the texts by writing a
   three-sentence summary of each of them.

RESEARCH

Research to Clarify Choose at least one unfamiliar detail from one of the texts. Briefly

research that detail. In what way does the information you learned shed light on an aspect of

the essay?

from The Naked Babe and the Cloak of Manliness • from Macbeth 395

LIT17_SE12_U03_B2_SG.indd 395PERSONALIZE FOR LEARNING 3/14/16 1:20 AM

Challenge

Ask More Questions Challenge students to write another

comprehension question that asks a reader to draw a connection

between the two critical texts. Encourage them to make their

questions as specific as they can and to include quotations from

both texts, if possible. Have them trade their questions with another

member of the group and write answers. Give pairs the opportunity

to share their questions and their answers with the whole group.

Comprehension Check

Possible responses:

The Naked Babe and the Cloak of Manliness

1. Macbeth’s return to the Weird Sisters is ironic
   because he seeks unambiguous answers to
   his doubts, but they only speak in riddles
   and paradoxes.


2. According to Brooks, the child symbolizes a future
   that Macbeth cannot control, the “enlarging
   purposes which make life meaningful,” and
   ultimately, strength.


3. The last prophesy, that Macbeth will be undone
   by a child “not of woman born,” is the ultimate
   irony: because he was not born of a woman in
   the natural sense, he has walked into his own
   trap, an unavoidable demise.
   Macbeth


4. Kermode defines the “interim” as the time
   between the decision to kill Duncan and the
   action itself.


5. Kermode cites foul/fair, present/future, losing/
   winning, victory/crime, death/birth, thought/deed
   as examples of paradoxes or “false antitheses.”


6. Kermode describes the language patterns as
   “seesaw” because they alternate between points
   of opposition in a repeated rhythm of questions
   and answers, light and darkness, childhood and
   manliness, and fair and foul.


7. Possible response: Kermode suggests that the
   language of Macbeth reveals and illuminates
   the underlying meaning of the play. Its rhythms
   alternate between opposing ideas and images,
   and in the interim is the “dizzying gap” between
   thought and deed. In the end, ambiguity reigns
   and Macbeth is caught in his own undoing.

Research

Research to Clarify If students have difficulty

choosing an interesting detail from the texts, then

suggest they choose from the historical Macbeth,

Thomas de Quincey, Julius Caesar, Macbeth’s

Scotland, or St. Augustine.

Small-Group Learning 395

LIT17_TE12_U03_B2_SG.indd 395 16-04-11 8:23 AM