Was it worth it Macbeth??? Was it??

In Shakespeare's tale of Macbeth, the title character does a lot of sketchy stuff to become the king of Scotland and try to stay that way. Sketchy stuff being murdering the former king, his best friend, and the wife and child of a potential threat. The whole time he knows that he'll become king on the word of a witch's prophecy, so there wasn't a lot of risk in that part. But in the end, his wife goes insane and dies, and then he himself is dead. The questions that the readers/ audience is left with tends to be "was it worth it?"

In my opinion, no. I think he ended up worse off than when he started. While the Macbeth we meet at the beginning of the play was not the wealthiest man, he did alright. He and his wife were living comfortably, if modestly. They didn't have a family, but that was alright- he had a nice job (protecting the kingdom) and a good boss (the king) who seemed to like him- he wasn't at the top of the food chain but he wasn't at the bottom either.

By the time he meets his end, he's more paranoid than a conspiracy-fearing neckbeard reddit user, his wife is just plain going off the deep end before she dies somewhat mysteriously, and then he is murdered and remembered by no one but the people who despised him.

And that, I think is what matters- that his short and strange life was ended abruptly without him making any positive contributions to the world.

GENDER ROLLS!!!

"Unsex me here, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty..."

“Is it a blog about feminism??” -Mr. McCarthy, when he read the blog assignment aloud to us on Friday.

“Isn’t it always a blog about feminism?” -Me

I am not 100% clear on what Lady Macbeth is asking, but from our in class discussion I’ve gathered that she is saying that she wants to be made unlike woman, more like man, and full of cruelty. I responded to this in two ways- the first being the response of my inner misandrist. Misandry is the opposite of a misogyny, which means man-hating. I don’t actually hate men, but I like to play the part for sarcastic, dramatic, satirical effect when trying to get a point across. Anyway, this is what that side of me had to say about it-

“Yup.”

The other side of me, the less sarcastic, third wave feminist* side, gently chastised my inner misandrist, reminded myself that I don’t hate men, I actually rather like them, I just hold them to a higher standard than they are held in the patriarchy, and that I don’t hate the player** I hate the game***.

In short, the intersectionality of my feminism would like to issue a reminder that Lady Macbeth doesn’t want to be a man, she just wants to have some traditionally masculine qualities, such as strength and cruelty.

Who wrote this frying her brain with physics homework and eating a dark chocolate cupcake and then didn’t edit it to see if she was rambling too much?

This girl.

*so first wave was when white ladies wanted to vote, second wave was when women realized they needed to fight for the rights of all women, women of color included, and third wave is about the inclusion of ALL sisters, not just the cis-ters. Which means transgender women and men and non-binary joined the club. I could’ve written that more plainly, but then I wouldn’t be able to use my awesome cis-ters pun I stole from someone on the internet.

**dudes

***the patriarchy

~side note~ maybe someday I will be able to articulate my feministy thoughts more eloquently rather than just getting really angry and letting all my blood flow right from my head to my fingertips on my keyboard, where all I can do is say “nooo, come on, feminism, when you were the size of a watermelon a woman squeezed you out of a whole in her body the size of a lemon, nooo, how can you hate women, nooo” Until then, fellow classmates, goodnight.

No New Tale To Tell

I do not understand why some people think all tales come from these in Canterbury. I think a lot of them are very strange, about weird people who go around seducing each other's wives and daughters and beating each other. It seemed to me to be lots of gossiping and rumor spreading, with bits of life lessons sprinkled in. I quite liked the Wife of Bath's tale, because with an element of magic to it it seemed more story like, more of a legend, and less gossip. She told it with intent to teach a lesson, and to tell someone something she's learned over her years. As opposed to a lot of the characters who seemed to want to get back at each other, like the Friar and the Summoner, or the Reeve.

Truth

“And the other moral is, what you remember happened, becomes what happened.”

-John Green

WARNING: The following may or may not be a work of fiction.

The story of what happened according to my cousin from Nebraska:

“When I was in first grade, I, like so many six year olds before me, played House at recess. My best friend Joanna was the mommy, I was the baby, and Mary was my older sister. The rest of the cast rotated- sometimes Sam was a puppy, sometimes Frances was also a puppy, and sometimes David was a puppy too, and then there were too many puppies for Mommy to handle and she would freak out and leave the puppies and the babies to fend for themselves while she went to Dunkin’ Doughnuts with her boyfriend.

Her boyfriend was a boy named Joseph who transferred into our school when his school was closed in second grade. I don’t remember what his old school was called. He came in with Brianna, Chris, Alex, and another kid named Joseph who went by Joe. And they all settled in pretty nicely.

Except, of course, for Joseph, who decided it would be fun to chase around the group of girls (plus David) who were just minding their own business playing House in the corner of the lot by the bushes. And at first it was kind of fun, it added a new element to our game- sometimes we were being robbed, and sometimes we were the robbers being chased by the police. And for a while, Mary and I didn’t mind.

Then Joanna stopped running.

Then Joanna befriended the robber/ policeman and stopped being our mom. Instead she just walked around the lot talking to Joseph- about what, who knows. You have to understand that I was a very close-minded seven year old who firmly believed that boys should play football at recess- except for David, poor David, who’s only friend was Frances, who shared her Pokémon cards with him. But anyway, I did not approve of Joseph and Joanna. I talked to Mary and she didn’t like it either. The puppies didn’t care.

In third grade Mary moved away, Sam, Frances, and David got into Bakugan, and Joanna made it very clear she had outgrown House, and me. When Joseph moved away she struck up a friendship with a couple mean girls who learned sign language to talk to each other in class. And so I was lonely for the rest of elementary school, The End.”

The story of what happened according to Joanna, probably, I don’t know, I’ve never met her:

“When I was in first grade, I was the mom who always took her daughters who Chicken Fingers and Mashed Potato Land during recess. When they got the dogs, they always wanted to get a dogsitter even though we were just leaving for a day in House time, and like eight minutes real time, tops. And I don’t know, I guess I just started to outgrow it.

Sandy and Liz supported me being with Joseph- they thought we made a cute couple. But it wasn’t like that. He was my friend.

I promised my old friends I’d play with them on the last day of third grade picnic, but when I found out that would be Joseph’s last day I ditched them. They’d been nothing but terrible to me all year, insisting that I still be with them even though I didn’t want to, saying terrible things to my closest friend and pretty much making him my only friend. No way would I go back to that.

When fourth grade started, the gang had pretty much dissolved anyway. Sandy and Liz invited me to sit with them at lunch. They were’nt the best, but anything was better than what I had.”

Modern Day Beowulf

From what I have read of Beowulf, I do not like him very much. He travels with his friends to go defeat a monster, and he says he wants their help, but it really just feels like he brought along a bus of cheerleaders to watch him slay the beast. When they get there and he's telling the king he wants to slay the dragon, his entire speech can be summarized as "I'm Beowulf, I'm awesome, we're distantly related, I've done lots of stuff, I'm gonna do more stuff, let's party." "YYAYYYY!!!" cheer the Danes, and they party and get drunk and fall asleep.
Later in life, upon meeting the dragon, he again refuses the aid of weapons, declaring that God will decide who will win, and who will die. I'm sorry man, but I'm pretty sure God is still capable of helping you win if you've got a sword. I mean, it can't hurt to bring a weapon, right?
When his fellow Geats run away in fear of the dragon, and no one but Wiglaf is left, what does Beowulf do? Insist on taking on the dragon himself. While Wiglaf goes and get the loot.
Time and time again, I found Beowulf's arrogance to be annoying, unrelatable, and stupid. When I look for interesting characters I look for flaws, I find their fears, I seek out what makes them human. I understand that he's a metaphor for God and God's power and what happens when you fight for God's will. But I thought it made Beowulf really boring.

Me

Hello, friends! Here is a delayed post about myself.

My name is Georgia, and I'll be sixteen in two weeks. I live on the north side with my mom, dad, and two little brothers, Frankie, age 6, and August, age 14. He's a freshman. My dad makes music for commercials and is a studio manager, and my mom works for my dad getting clients and doing taxes and such.

I went to a Catholic school for seven years, but consider myself a secular Jew. That just means I study my heritage and celebrate my culture with other secular Jews, but I'm an agnostic, so we don't talk about God as much. Instead of the Torah teaching us to worship God, we choose to see stories and lessons to learn from. I'm the teacher's assistant in the third/fourth grade classroom at my sunday school in Oak Park, where the kids learn Jewish history and traditions.

I have wanted to be a teacher since I was in first grade, but recently as I became more civically and politically active I've found my aspirations shift towards Washington D.C. I hope to one day work for change within our country's education system, especially with regards to teenagers' mental health, nutrition, and teacher's pay and position. I want to work in the White House at some point, even though the position I just described is more of a lobbyist. Maybe I can intern during or after college. Maybe once I've completed my complete overhaul I'll be a speechwriter's secretary. Can you tell I watch a lot of the West Wing?

Other than that, I enjoy reading Harry Potter, marathoning The Office and High School Musical, reading rookieemag.com and being jealous of all the young and talented and beautiful writers and photographers and artists, screaming at the internet about feminism, and pie. I think this is going to me a fun year! Good luck everyone!