Despite being written over 400 years ago, Macbeth remains a timeless and powerful work that continues to be performed and studied around the world. Its themes of power, ambition, and guilt are just as relevant today as they were in Shakespeare’s time, and its enduring popularity is a testament to its enduring appeal.

During this project, we read and analyzed the play “Macbeth” with the objective of determining how Shakespeare is still relevant today using the core themes of the play. We learned about the people of the time, as well as the beliefs of the time. One of these beliefs was in an absolute world order, which is represented by this graphic.

I found that, if I believed in this absolute order, the play would be much more interesting, which is almost identical to media we in our modern era where we enjoy watching movies and shows about people breaking norms of all kinds.

Shakespeare’s Macbeth and James Cameron’s Avatar both explore the theme of the corrupting influence of power. In Macbeth, the character of Macbeth is initially a noble and brave warrior, but as he becomes more powerful, his ambition consumes him and he becomes willing to do whatever it takes to hold onto that power, even if it means committing horrific deeds. Similarly, in Avatar, the human characters, driven by their desire for resources and power, seek to exploit and destroy the alien world of Pandora and its inhabitants. Both stories show how power can corrupt and lead individuals to make selfish and destructive decisions.

Both Macbeth and Avatar also explore the theme of guilt and the consequences of one’s actions. Throughout the play, Macbeth is haunted by the ghosts of those he has killed and is consumed by guilt as he becomes more isolated from the people he once cared about. In Avatar, the main character Jake Sully initially goes along with the humans’ plans to exploit Pandora, but eventually comes to understand the harm they are causing and feels guilt for his role in it. Both stories show how guilt can drive individuals to try to right their wrongs and make amends for their actions.

The themes of power, ambition, and guilt in both Macbeth and Avatar demonstrate how these issues continue to be relevant and impactful in modern society. Both stories serve as cautionary tales about the dangers of unchecked ambition and the importance of considering the consequences of one’s actions.

At the winter exhibition this year, our class presented our modern adapted version of one of the scenes from Macbeth, while focusing on one of the themes that we identified in both Avatar and Macbeth. I chose act II scene I.

This performance was rather disappointing to me, as I had a great story that I wanted to portray to the audience, but I felt that the lack of props and time really restricted my ability to set the scene for my performance and show the audience my story.

If you really want to watch my performance, it’s attached below.

Another reason for this being a FAIL in my book was the lack of preparation that I gave myself. for this final performance of the project, I found that if I were to do this sort of thing again I would need to think much more about the performance from the audience’s point of view, which was where I found this play to be at its weakest.

My story anyway, was about a playwright in England, who worked under a famous man known as Shakespeare. Our main character, Quakespeare, heard from a fortuneteller that he was going to become great. While fully believing in this prophecy of sorts, he became impatient. He wanted to become great right at that moment, so he decided he would kill his famous superior and as second in line at the theatre, take it over in all its glory. When my scene starts, Quakespeare has just left his home to enact his plan on the highly dedicated Shakespeare who was staying at his theatre late to finish writing his newest masterpiece. While making his way to the theatre, Quakespeare runs into one of the actors from their theatre, and they exchange a few words as seen in the video above. Our characters take their leave and Quakespeare makes a short speech before going to murder Shakespeare, and the scene ends.

The timeless themes in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, such as power, ambition, and guilt, reveal a lot about our society today.

One of the main themes in the play is the corrupting influence of power. Macbeth starts off as a noble and brave warrior, but as he becomes more powerful, his ambition consumes him and he becomes willing to do whatever it takes to hold onto that power, even if it means committing horrible actions. This theme is still relevant today, as we see examples of people in positions of power acting corruptly or abusing their power for personal gain.

The theme of ambition is also timeless, as it is human nature to desire success and to strive for more. However, Macbeth’s ambition ultimately leads to his downfall, as he becomes consumed by his desire for power and lets it consume him. This serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked ambition and the importance of maintaining a sense of morality.

Finally, the theme of guilt and the consequences of one’s actions is also timeless. In the play, Macbeth is haunted by the ghosts of those he has killed and is consumed by guilt as he becomes more isolated from the people he once cared about. This theme is relevant today, as we see the importance of taking responsibility for our actions and the consequences that can come from not doing so.

Overall, the timeless themes in Macbeth reveal a lot about the human condition and the dangers of unchecked ambition, the corrupting influence of power, and the importance of taking responsibility for one’s actions.

Hello and welcome to the exciting final post of this school year. This post will be about our humanities project that was showcased at the PLP spring exhibition, titled “Cray Cray Yay Yay”.

This project had us find someone we were interested in on the north shore from the past or present time that has had or will have an impact on North Vancouver. My choice of person was Alfred Wallace, who was an important figure in the development of North Vancouver.

Here you can see my short write up that was on my table at the exhibition.

The goal of this project was to research and share your impact maker’s importance at the spring exhibition where we invited parents as well as the impact maker themselves, or if they were no longer alive we invited someone close to our impact maker. If you took the time to read my brief explanation of my impact maker above, you would know that Alfred Wallace was the founder of Burrard Dry Dock, which was a massive dry dock in Burrard Inlet. The person that I invited to the exhibition was Paul Hebson, who is the VP and GM of the Vancouver Drydock Co. which is owned by Seaspan and is located partially on the land that Wallace’s drydock was located, where the original drydock was several times larger than the current drydock. This is not just because the land in North Vancouver, especially on the waterfront. The other reason for the drydock being so much smaller nowadays is because of the use case for the drydock. Back when the Wallace family owned the drydock, mostly in the war times like WWI and II, the docks were used to construct navy ships very quickly, and navy boats being as big as they are, they needed a lot of space to be worked on. But that’s not it, because of the efficiency of the drydock, they were able to construct multiple ships at the same time.

Here you can see my portrait, which depicts Alfred Wallace. You can probably spot some of the important decisions I had to make while creating this portrait. The first and most obvious one, the face, or lack thereof. This decision was the start of my thought process for the portrait because as hard as I searched, there are no recorded photos of Wallace (probably due to the lack of cameras during his lifetime). This decision was also reinforced by the fact that Wallace is mostly known for the boats that were produced at his drydock rather than his person. That is the next important part of this drawing. The silhouette is made up of boats because of hit boat building reputation, and each boat was chosen because they were very similar to or the same model as the ships that were built on Wallace’s drydock (the Queen of Tsawwassen was one of them). The last important choice that you might notice in this video is that the water is a somewhat odd colour. This was done to make the scene look like a storm, indicating the hard times that Wallace went through throughout his life, especially WWI.

Presenting this at the exhibition was a lot of fun because I got to tell everyone about the cool things that I learned not just about Alfred Wallace, but also about the development of the North Shore as well as how drydocks work thanks to my tour of the drydocks.

Thanks for reading this far!

Later!