Darn Those Witches

In my life, I think everything does happen for a reason. I might not think that moment to moment, but when I look at the bigger picture it makes the most sense to me. Bad things happen to teach me lessons, and good things happen because of lessons learned; that's the way I see it. My choices may play some part in what happens, but I do think there is a bigger picture, even if there might be different ways to get to it.

Shakespeare might not agree with that in how he depicts fate in Macbeth. 

In Macbeth, the three witches tell Macbeth a prophecy that he will be king, but they don't ever tell him how, why, or what he has to do, they just know the end goal. Macbeth then decides that to make this come true he must kill Duncan, which he follows through with. The second part of the prophecy states that Banquo's son will become king. Macbeth, trying to stop this from happening, kills Banquo by hiring two murders to do it (and then a third one randomly shows up). The witches then tell Macbeth that he should fear Macduff, so Macbeth kills his family. And lastly, *spoiler alert* (but not really because everyone dies at the end of one of Shakespeare's tragedies) Macbeth dies at the end of the play, so the prophecy should come true. Macbeth was king, but now Banquo's son should be king. 

But, is all this really fate? Let's all take a second to look at the three witches. First off, they tell Macbeth that he will be king, which gives him the idea of killing Duncan to make the prophecy come true. Secondly, they tell him that Banquo's son will be king, which gives him the idea of hiring murders to kill him. When this happens, a third murder shows up that the others didn't know about. It could have been one of the witches making sure that everything went as planned. Lastly, the witches make him suspicious of Macduff, which leads to him killing his family. All of these things lead to Macbeth's downfall and ultimately make the prophecy come true, like the witches intended.

So this all boils down to one thing; it wasn't fate, it was the witches convincing Macbeth to do all this crazy stuff. Macbeth is already this easily influenced person with an incredibly guilty conscience, so it was all to easy for the witches to influence him and in turn make him go crazy. Poor Macbeth, he got taken advantage of by three crazy witches with a devious master plan. 

So... In the wise words of a meme stolen from Mrs. Genesky... 

IB Student Takes On Modern Art

Israel Meza Moreno

Miradas I

Mexico

2012

My sad attempt 

2. This piece was originally created in Mexico City in 1978. It's ultimate goal was to illustrate that it is hard to tell what a criminal looks like or who exactly could be a criminal.

3. This piece was originally a zoomed in/extremely pixelated photo of a group of convicts that the artist then took black acrylic paint and painted over everything except the eyes of the criminals. The artist wants to expose the "windows to the soul" by only leaving the eyes exposed. Eyes reveal a very personal aspect of a person, so by the artist doing this, it gives the viewer a more personal relationship with the piece and equalizes the criminals.

4. This piece is arranged so that only the eyes of the convicts are the focus.While you can still make out the shapes of the people if you look closely, it does not catch your attention at first.The artist uses a more transparent black paint so you can still see general shapes, but it is all fuzzy and black. There are boxes around the eyes instead of just random shapes to give the piece more structure and uniformity.

5.The overall message of this piece is the idea of equalizing these convicts so they are not just thought of for the crimes they have committed. There identity is no longer "criminal" but "human being." The artist focuses on how intimate eye contact can be and uses that to reveal his message. The viewer sees a more personal side of the people in the piece instead of their ulterior self. The people in the picture have a more intimate side revealed by having their eyes exposed (eyes are the window to your soul aren't they?). So the artist created a more personal feeling both ways.