Tag: Macbeth

Exaggerations of the Simple Stuff of Human Life

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Act 4, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, when the second witch says:

“By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.”

And Macbeth enters.  What a marvelous scene.  Witches, bloody ghosts and a demigod truly drained of his humanity.  A horror story in a stage play.  And then Ray Bradbury takes that line, “Something wicked this way comes” and makes it the title of his own American ghost story; the story of a haunted carnival.  Now what does Macbeth have to do with Bradbury?  Well, in both cases we have basically good people seduced by the devil.  Whether it’s Shakespeare’s witches or Bradbury’s Mr. Dark it is the story of men succumbing to the devil’s promise for their heart’s desire in exchange for their souls.

Macbeth wants the Scottish crown.  Bradbury’s Green Town denizens want various things.  Tom Fury and Mr. Crosetti succumb to lust.  Mr. Tetley wants money.  Miss Foley and Charles Halloway want their youth back.  Jim Nightshade wants to be older so he can indulge his various negative desires.  And for these things they risk becoming permanent prisoners of Mr. Dark and Mr. Cooger’s haunted carnival travelling the American continent in search of more souls to consume.

What a marvelous conceit.  An ancient locomotive from the Civil War era, arrives in small towns in the middle of the night and sniffs out the spiritually wounded inhabitants and lures them into the haunted attractions of the show.  If they wander into the house of mirrors, they will see their heart’s desire or their greatest fear.  Or they can follow the barker’s lure and enter the tent where the belly dancers expose their bodies for a silver dime.  And those that disappear are no longer recognizable as themselves and so cannot be rescued by any police force.

And redemption can only be had in Bradbury’s story if the devil is laughed out of town.  Laughter and happiness are the only cures for this evil.  The secret is to realize that life is not a tragedy.  Even at its worst, it is better than the alternative which is nothingness.  Pain and sadness and even death are a human story and in fact the only certainty in this world.  But it’s also still better than never existing.  Because no matter how sad and awful our existence, it’s still ours.  We get to feel it and react to it and maybe win a few rounds before we’re finally cornered and beaten by death.

So, the ride’s the thing.  That’s the lesson that Charles Halloway learns by the end of the story.  Even though he’s old and overwhelmed with trying to be the father of a young boy, that overwhelming challenge is his greatest opportunity to squeeze every bit of meaning and gusto out of what remains of his life.  And the boys get to see that fears and desires are exaggerations of the simple stuff of human life.  Lust and greed and fear are just the ingredients of life taken out of balance from their normal proportions and occasions.

I wonder who will take this theme up next?  Maybe I will, someday.

Finding Significance

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Regular readers know that I admire, perhaps excessively, a small number of well-known literary works.  Shakespeare has several of my favorites.  But there are gems scattered throughout western literature from the Iliad on.  And of course, there’s the Bible.

I’ve always admired this speech from Macbeth:

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

 

These are the words of a man who has come to believe that life is meaningless.  But it’s really a rationalization for the results of murdering his own conscience.  He was describing the hell he had created and that soon would engulf him permanently.

And I find this idea instructive.  I think if you keep in mind that there is a moral order, then it gives you a sense of perspective.  You can be surrounded by evil and forced to deal with the worst of humanity.  But if you can work to preserve the things that are good then you can have some peace in knowing you are giving meaning to human life.  And that’s not nothing.

Despair is a godless pleasure that we’re not allowed to imbibe.  You have to work to make this crazy world of ours better.  Certainly, we are currently seeing a diminution in the state of our world.  The morals, the morale, the wisdom of our society is draining away in a shocking way.

And that’s alarming.  But it’s far from the first time and it’s probably not the worst example on record.  It’s important to keep things in perspective and act reasonably.  We will be surrounded for the foreseeable future by people who have bought into the current narrative.  This includes all kinds of very harmful ideas and practices.  The results of this are the excesses of our culture; confusion over things like the roles of men and women and the importance of traditional practices in living our lives and raising our children.

We can instill meaning and purpose into our actions and interactions with each other by choosing carefully to perform the actions that improve our surroundings and make us better people.  And this is especially important in our relations with the young.  They are growing up in a world that has been stripped of reason and dignity.  They spend their every waking minute immersed in a world of TikTok influencers and other phony celebrities telling them what they should think and what they should value.  It’s a wonder they haven’t all been degraded down to the status of sub-human idiots.  I feel it’s especially important to enrich the lives of the young people in my life with things that nourish and expand their minds and souls.  There is the meaning that we can find; keeping this world from falling into a new dark age.

Life is brief but it is a tale told by whatever truth you have in your heart.  If it signifies nothing then that is what is in your soul.

Signifying Something

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Macbeth has a speech late in the play.  His wife has suicided and his enemies are gathering for the kill.  And all his actions and all his hopes have been swallowed up into a nightmare.  He says,

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

Macbeth: Act 5, Scene 5

And sometimes our plight summons a similar feeling in me.  Our enemies call all the shots.  They control the heights of all the power structures.  They’ve even done a thorough job of brain-washing the younger generation into thinking that all the destruction of our way of life was the inevitable working of capitalism.  So that a decline into an impoverished welfare state is the reasonable and just future for themselves.  That life is but a walking shadow.  And that resisting this fate is a hopeless effort, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.  And controlling the youth, they determine the future.

I don’t deny that is probably where the smart money is currently bet.

But for whatever reason I disagree.  Maybe it’s just personal prejudice.  But, when I look at both sides, I find that our side has the more interesting characters; a more compelling plot.  We have a better story to tell.

The Left is selling despair.  Their message is: give up and die.

They say trade your life for a cash card and a smart phone and a grimy cell in a youth hostel and gender assignment surgery and the promise that you won’t have to think or try.

And I’m sure that there is a good-sized audience that will walk down that dead end.  Millions.  But I refuse to believe that everyone will follow it.  There will be a good-sized audience; millions, that will say, “That’s all you’re selling?”

And some of them will hear what our side has to say.  And I think that may be enough to decide things in the long run.  An army of zombies, even an army of millions, is still mostly nothing.  And it’s an aging army.  Zombies don’t have children.  They get older and weaker every day.

Our side has the advantage that what we say not only has the ring of truth, it is the truth.  Calling nonsense, nonsense and basing your actions on logic and reality even in the short run is the winning strategy.

The fact that they’ve rigged so many parts of the system we live under doesn’t mean it’s hopeless.  It just means you have to use your head to avoid the snares and pitfalls they’ve set for us.  With the Left in authority in many roles it’s obviously not going to be easy to flourish.  There is a lot of pain and frustration involved.  But as long as this country is still the best option for living a somewhat free existence then it’s worth our while to work around their traps.

And even just looking at the messaging that seems to be moving around in the media, even in the mainstream media, it seems that our version of the story is resonating with all kinds of different people.  I think that Biden and his band of weirdos have so thoroughly botched their transformation of America that they’ve even alienated a lot of the coalition of the oppressed.  If you watch the interviews even the zombies are semi-awake and complaining that their free stuff is too expensive.

The Democrats can steal elections and run roughshod over the Constitution but eventually they’ll end up like the Soviets.  Their system will degenerate into a Potemkin Village and one day the cardboard will collapse and there won’t be anything left but angry peasants with pitchforks.

So, for whatever reason I don’t feel like just giving up.  And anyone else who has something to say other than, “let’s give up,” can say it here.

28MAR2018 – Quote of the Day

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I must be in a grim mood.

 

 

Shakespeare

Macbeth.  Act 5, Scene 5

 

SEYTON

The queen, my lord, is dead.

 

MACBETH

She should have died hereafter;

There would have been a time for such a word.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.