A SIMPLE PLAN a Film Text Introduction in Understanding Macbeth

A SIMPLE PLAN – a film text introduction in understanding Macbeth.

Answer the following questions in detail. Your word limit should be at least 300 words. This is an S/N exercise.

Before

Captain: For brave Macbeth – well he deserves that name - / Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel, / Which smoked with bloody execution, / Like valor’s minion carved out his passage / Till he faced the slave [Macdonwald] /…Till he unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops, / And fixed his head upon our battlements. (1, 2, 16-20)

Macduff: Turn, hell-hound, turn!…Then yield thee, coward, / And live to be the show and gaze o’ th’ time: / We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are, / Painted upon a pole, and underwrit, / “Here may you see the tyrant”. (5, 8, 3 & 23-27)

1. In the movie A Simple Plan we are introduced to a modern day type Macbeth character in Hank. In detail describe him before he finds the money and in contrast to the way greed affects him as the movie progresses. You will have to answer this question in a progressive manner.

Lady Macbeth: To beguile the time, / Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, / Your hand, your tongue: look like th’ innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t…you shall put / This night’s great business into my dispatch… (1, 4, 60-65)

2. In the movie we are introduced to a modern day type Lady Macbeth character in Sarah, Hanks wife. In the play Macbeth, Lady Macbeth can be best characterised by her iron will and strength of mind. List the ways in which Frank’s wife exhibits similar qualities to Lady Macbeth. Old Man: ‘Tis unnatural, / Even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last / A falcon, tow’ring in her pride of place, / Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed. Ross: And Duncan’s horse – a thing most strange and certain - / Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, / Turned wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, / Contending ‘gainst obedience, as they would make / War with mankind. (2, 4, 10-18)

3. In the play Macbeth there is the powerful presence of supernatural characters and happenings. The above quotation captures nature almost turning on itself and defying logic. In the movie a Simple Plan locate two types of animals and reflect on their symbolic significance in the film based on where they appear and why.

4. The play Macbeth is a tragedy. As with all tragedies the plot becomes convoluted or complicated by ‘snowballing action’. That is a series of incidents whereby things go terribly wrong and therefore the plot runs headlong toward a tragic conclusion. Find and list all of these markers or incidents in the movie A Simple Plan.