Game of Books: is there a good alternative to Macbeth?

I kind of touched on this idea in one of my earlier posts but after thinking about it more ive managed to come up with an example of every them from Macbeth in the TV show Game of Thrones. For the purposes of this blog post I will be focusing on season 1 of the show.

Apearence vs Reality
This is difficult almost from the shear amount of good examples from the show. The show itself is basically one big play on this theme. Everyone from Ned Stark to the brothel owner seems to have a hidden agenda and takes steps to hide it while they work towards it, somtimes with better results than others.

Good vs Evil
Prince Joffery is a word that I cant say here on a class blog, in fact, he is every word that I cant say here, yes, even that one, but most importantly he is the living embodiment of evil. Thats not me being harsh, he just is. Almost everyone else in the show is some shade of grey at this point, but he is evil. On the good side we have Ned Stark, who spends most of his time on the show trying to help people and his family, often working against the prince himself.

Role of Women
For this, we have a contrast. The loving mother Catlyn Stark and her daughter Arya Stark. Catlyn Stark is a women with 5 children and has developed quite the motherly instinct. She will do anything to protect he children right up unt... wait, season 1,right. Arya on the other hand has no interest in being at all lady like.

Fate and Free will
This doesnt really come in till the second season but once you are introduced to the idea of the lord of light you start to see how this world might completely deterministic. This works pretty much the same way it works in Macbeth, with a witch and lord who wants to become King.

if there are any themes I missed or you want me to expand more leave something in the comments below

Shakespeare should not be allowed in class.

There has been some debate recently about whether or not to continue to teach Shakespeare in English class. The majority of students don't' like Shakespeare (that is a assumption but if you want I can do a survey) and automatically recoil at the mention of his name. This automatic response makes the entire unit feel more like a chore than any other unit we do, and what do we really learn from him that we couldnt get from other playwrights? we can right essays and quote lines from any play, so teaching us those skills arent dependent on Shakespeare. Is it because Shakespeare's plays are still relevant today? There are probably hundreds of plays written in the past 397 years since he died that would also meet this requirement(full disclosure  I don't watch or read plays outside of class). Shakespeare was a great writer, but do we still need to be talking about him all these centuries later? I think it is time we move on to somebody more modern, possibly written in the last century, possibly even a different medium. All the themes present in Macbeth are also fully present (probably more so) in the TV show Game of Thrones. Just an Idea

Macbeth memes

Bad LUck MacbethI dont always

Fate vs Free Will

Do we have free will? Would we know if we didn't? What is it to begin with?

The concept of free will is a difficult one to comprehend. Basically it means that one has the ability to his or her own decisions and be able see them through to the end. In a free society like our one would think that every person does in fact have free will, but what really goes in this decision making?

The human brain is essentially a computer. I accepts input, calculates and stores data, and provides output. This means that any decision one makes is really just the product of calculations put through a machine that was programmed by an experience  that was affected by other people making the same type of calculations, making the whole thing one large loop that predetermines what every future decision will be. In this sense we really don't have free will do we?

However there is a way to break this loop. Fate. You make decisions not based on past experience  you leave it up to fate to sort it out. This is done through the flip of a coin or the roll of a die. Since your experiences has no control over what the out come may be this is the only way to ensure that a non preordained decision can be made.

Basically the more you leave if up to Fate, the more Free Will you have.

Racial Sensitivity in Costumes

This was originally meant to be posted the last time we were in the computer lab but apparently something went wrong when I posted it and when i went to see if there were any comments it wasnt there. So here is is again.

On February 25th, at a New York Purim (a Jewish holiday where people dress up) party, Jewish activist and politician Dov Hikind decided to go dressed up as a "basket ball player" with all the required elements: a jersey  a basketball, and black-face.

I originally heard about this story watching the comedy political news show The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and I thought it was a great example of the racial sensitivity in costumes we were talking about earlier this semester. Hikind is a politician who actively speaks out against racism, racial stereotypes, racial profiling, and yet he still dressed up in this way. Hikind's defence was "I can’t imagine anyone getting offended. You know, anyone who knows anything about Purim knows that ...people get dressed up in, you name it, you know, in every kind of dress-up imaginable". He apparently didn't intend any kind of disrespect but even today is has not issued a formal apology saying that he "is sorry people got offended", which is basically not an apology at all and since then black leaders have gotten together to call for his resignation from his office.


Sources:
http://heebmagazine.com/about-that-blackface-purim-costume/43347