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UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO PARÁ

INSTITUTO DE LETRAS E COMUNICAÇÃO - ILC


FACULDADE DE LETRAS ESTRANGEIRAS MODERNAS - FALEM
Fone: (091) 3201-8779 E-Mail:falem.ufpa@yahoo.com.br

Midterm Exam
Teatro Anglófono
Prof. Dr. Otávio Guimarães Tavares
Student Maurício Oliveira Coelho Marques

Part 01 - Shakespeare
2) If we google the words “violence definition”, we would find this meaning: “behavior
involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something”. As we
may noticed, the explanation does not say it is a good or a bad thing, although we all
know that violence is horrible. It is important to keep this in mind because in
Shakespeare’s Macbeth the play starts in a battlefield, with the killing of many people
and war itself is not bad or good, war is impersonal – one side fight for what they believe
is right and vice-versa.
Having said that, violence plays an important role in the play, is one of the themes. We
are first presented with this bloodshed and this is the first type of violence: physical
violence. This physical violence operates and interacts increasingly throughout the play,
blood leads to more blood (“blood will to blood”), meaning violence breeds more
violence. It is a cycle. The play also ends with the death of Macbeth – more violence,
almost in a karmic way: “What goes around, comes around”. It is because of killing that
Macbeth reaches the throne. We are able to see that this violence is driven by ambition.
The only way Macbeth becomes a king is with violence and becoming a king like this,
opens the door’s opportunity to others characters to do the same thing, in a kind of
“Werther Effect” way. “If he can murder the current king, I can do as well”. So, Macbeth
wants to execute everyone who gets in his way.
Which lead us to the second type of violence: the psychological violence. Lady Macbeth
presses and influences Macbeth to do what he does. Lady Macbeth do this, maybe,
because she is led to ambition and is hungry for power as well. She too wants the throne.
Therefore, we have physical violence itself – the play already starts with death – and we
also have this continuity of physical violence, only this time influenced by the
psychological violence that Lady Macbeth does with her husband.
Part 02 – Beckett
7) Repetition is a literary device that repeats a specific term or action to emphasize its
significance to the work. Over the development of literary writing, repetition has
industrialized into not only conveying emphasis but also absurdity, expressing both
meaning and meaninglessness. There is a pessimistic approach in Beckett’s works, that
can be noticed when presented in plays that makes the spectator disturbed and disoriented.
This pessimist approach that Beckett conveys in his texts can be interpreted as his own
views on life, in a way that he sees life itself in a nihilistic tone, where nothing has sense
or meaning, and his plays are a consequence of the meaninglessness that is portrayed in
life and translated by the way he believes is the most unnerving approach that can be laid
out to the spectators. Beckett uses of elements such as numbers, sentences, words or
terms, geometrical patterns, space on stage and such others, to convey his own intent
when repeating these frameworks to exhaustion. This repetition, eventually, comes to full
circle when it starts to be metalinguistic, using the same device to explore and explain
this technique. Beckett’s plays are filled with this notion of a cycle. Rockaby, Not I, What
Where, Quad and Waiting for Godot, all have this characteristic in common: all of those
plays have this feeling of imprisonment in endless cycles and eternal routines through the
extended use of repetition. The characters feel conflicted about life, time, routine, the
whole world in itself and Beckett’s plays build a sense of existential crisis while, in the
same time, have this rebellious tone, as if it’s some kind of underground resistance against
the uphold meaning of life as it’s spread by popular media and other screenwriters. The
absurdity contained in his plays can often be perceived as the desire for a meaning in life
contrasted to the lack of meaning that surrounds Beckett’s texts, which is also a reason
for why he uses so much this literary device: the resignificance of one’s motifs, intentions
and attempts to communicate something or express something, comes one after one after
one, when repeating these elements along in scene. The first time something is said, there
is a certain meaning behind the speech, but as it goes on and on, this meaning vanishes,
leaving behind a lack of purpose and this element becomes empty, reflecting the nihilistic
approach that surrounds Beckett’s writing style and point of view.

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