Sunday, August 11, 2013

In Act 2 Scene 3 of Macbeth, list some stange occurences that Lennox reports and how do they link up with Duncan's murder?

In this scene Lennox is speaking casually to Macbeth
before the murder is discovered.  Lennox notes that the "night has been unruly,"
remarking that stone chimneys had been toppled by the wind, a force of a category 5
hurricane.  In addition, the wind produced sounds that seemed like screams of death and
voices foretelling of death.  Birds were shrieking, and apparently, there was an
earthquake.  This type of storm would have been so dramatic that people would fear for
their lives.  Lennox notes that he has not experienced anything like this in his whole
life:



"My
young remembrance cannot parallel                   A fellow to
it."



Lennox is a minor
character that frequently provides information to the audience.  In this case, he is
commenting upon a widely held belief that the natural world would respond to unnatural
events in the human world.  This idea is known as the Great Chain of Being.  Killing a
king was very high up on the chain, so disrupting the chain at that point created chaos
for all points below it.


Later, in Act III, other
characters will confirm the peculiarity of the night.

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