The fact that she likens herself to the witches using supernatural imagery “Come you spirits” would symbolise treachery and treason to an Elizabethan audience, backs up the opinion that she is truly evil. She renounces her femininity and thus becomes asexual. “Unsex me here”, she tries to suppress her true nature and here filial affection by denying her instinct , all for her husbands “vaulting ambition”, “come to my woman's breast and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers”. It is immediately as if she has become a fourth witch. The tremendous use of gory and paranormal imagery “make thick my blood” disgusts even a modern audience making her appear more like a monster parallel with “the secret black midnight hags” than a woman.

Lady Macbeth probes her husbands weaknesses by questioning his manhood “Are you a man?” , order to coerce him into killing Duncan. She is a rhetorical device, a verbal force that inspires her dithering husband, “But screw your courage to the sticking plate”. Manipulating her husband through taunts of unmanliness “ when you durst do it, then you are a man” shows her cruel nature, if we consider Macbeths bitterness to the fact that he cannot have children and so has accomplished nothing but a “barren sceptre”.

Perhaps the popular hatred of Lady Macbeth rests on her travesty of the Madonna ideal. She is characterised in terms of a few fundamental qualities, courage, determination and an extraordinary ability to deny all moral instinct by focusing her heart and mind on the matter at hand. “infirm of purpose”. She shows her steely resolve and her willingness to achieve the “ornament of life” by claiming “I would while it was smiling in my face/have plucked the nipple from it's boneless gums and dashed it's brains out”. These words offend the universal taboo, although they are only words, they still have the same effect of inspiring and impressing her husband who refers to her as “undaunted metal”. Each corporal agent to this terrible feat, by her monstrous and hideous claims of devotion to him.

Although Lady Macbeth goads him and taunts her husband “live a coward”, in reality she admires him. “thou wouldst be great art not without ambition, but the illness should attend it”. It is ironic that she views his virtues as his faults, which demonstrates how her morale judgement is distorted “too full o'th' milk of human kindness”. She sneers at his morality but praises his ambition. Lady Macbeth urges Macbeth who is unable to equivocate “look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it”. The play has a fugal quality because of the counterpoint running through it and the fact that Macbeth is so influenced by his wife. Macbeth echoes his wife “false face must hide what the false heart doth know”. Lady Macbeth may have taught Macbeth the art of equivocation but it is he who became the master.

Lady Macbeth hides her true feelings of fear and depression from her husband. Only through the use of soliloquy do we find out about her inner turmoil brought on by her continual suppression of her guilt. “here's the smell of blood still”. Perhaps Macbeth has never seen this sentiment in his wife. She always plays a supporting role. The dynamic of their relationship depends on her strength and his need for this strength to fuel is “vaulting ambition”. She does not reveal her maternal instincts such as the inability to kill Duncan “had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it”. This undermines her appearance as a woman of “undaunted metal”, as it portrays her human side.

It is ironic that Lady Macbeth is originally a realist, unlike her husband, and lacks the philosophical dimensions which should have deterred her from the murder of Duncan. She mitigates the consequences of the “sacrilegious” deed “a little water clears us of this deed”. She orders Macbeth three times to “consider it not so deeply”. It is also ironic that she develops an overactive compulsive disorder or cleaning her hands which proves her inability to continue equivocating and living with her guilt after trying to look after her husbands mentally frail state above her own. “those deeds must not be thought after those ways, so it will make us mad”. She sacrifices everything for her husband “vaulting ambition” but in the end her blood stained hands haunt her and drive her to distraction. “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”. She is by now wallowing in her guilt, but note she never communicates this to her husband. Yet alone she expresses her real feelings. She feels no triumph “our desire is got without content”. She would rather be dead then “by the distraction dwell in doubtful joy.”

But still she supports Macbeth, listens to his woes about his troubled mind “full of scorpions”, always playing the subordinate role. The murder of Duncan alienates Macbeth from heaven and created a rift between himself and his wife. It is she who feels the most isolated. “how my lord! Why do you keep alone?”. She invests heavily in her husband who never seems to support her. She is no longer his “dearest partner in greatness”, or his confidante and she is obliged to ask for an audience with him. “say to the king I would like to attend his leisure”. She is distraught by the fact their former intimacy is a thing of the past which again undermines the myth of the maligned woman and reveals a character both frightening and pathetic. After playing a subordinate role she takes control in the banquet scene which mentally exhausts her fragile mental state and marks the end of her active role in the play.

Although like her husband, it is insecurity that is her undoing, there is no question that guilt and remorse are what untimely destroy Lady Macbeth. Her total absence from Act 4 is Shakespeare's way of registering her discarded statues and her utter irreverence to Macbeth. The character that now emerges is vulnerable, guilt ridden and a pathetic shadow of her former dominant self. The doctor diagnoses her a “sickness of the heart, a mind diseased”.

Her subconscious now takes over, and it is filled with the feelings she refused to address when there was still time. She begins to show some moral shame and bears responsibility for Duncan “who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?”. She also shows remorse for the death of Banquo and Macduff's family. “the thane of Fife had a wife”. When Malcolm later refers to her as a “fiend-like queen”, he is inaccurate. The fiend in Lady Macbeth was expunged before she became queen. The piteous waif who unwillingly broadcasts her own guilt is a far cry from the screaming harridan of the earlier acts.

Only by committing her sin does Lady Macbeth discover her true nature which became “sorely charged”. Maybe the monster in her was always artificial and it was Macbeth who loved and needed her strength which forced her to extinguish her maternal instincts. Her suicide is simply declared “the Queen is dead my Lord”. Her small stature in his mind and in the closing act is a poetic counterpoint to her striding power in earlier acts. She is ultimately redeemed by the degree of her guilt, she passed from woman, through monster and back again.

The good Puritans of Salem devoutly believed that certain actions should not be partaken in, the girls, who participated in some such activities, feared punishment so much that they took the easiest way out. When witchcraft was mentioned, Abigail and the other jumped at the chance to clear their names and blacken others. This inability to speak the truth about something so simple just to avoid the punishment of the collective authority is an indicator of the mindset of the time, once seen as messengers of God [the girls are free from suspicion] could do as they pleased without retribution. Their religious teachings permitted them to kill, steal and manipulate to their hearts desires.

Theocracy and the impact it had on the witch-hunt is easily visible in the way that God’s word was taken as law. Religion in and of itself can either ruin or raise people to pinnacles of good or immorality. Its power is intended to guide people, but it may even damn them as well. John Proctor, in all of his wisdom, does not truly believe there could be such things as witches though he claims “the Bible speaks of witches, and I will not deny them.” (69). This statement is a direct contradiction of itself, for he may not go against his religion despite his better judgment. The fact that God ruled the town through men like Reverend Parris and Judge Danforth is a decent sign of the range of interpretation religion is subjected to. Currently, what happened during the trials is considered atrocities, but comparable atrocities happen due to similar misunderstandings between religions [Islamic extremists].

The two most pious figures in The Crucible followed the same religion and scriptures, but were of very dissimilar character. However, when Rev. Parris and Rev. Hale attempted to remove the presence of the devil from Betty, they felt that it may be necessary “to rip and tear to get her free.”(39). Surely, despite the doctors’ inability to find a problem with the child, there could not have been the Devil preying upon the girl. This superstition of the personification of Satan in anyone who acted differently than what was preferred is unfounded. Such statements would have to have physical proof in this day and age to be considered plausible, and could not have been used to convict people. Religion still has an ingrained influence on existing matters, thankfully not always to the point of hysteria as it was then. Nevertheless, it still does cause upsets between numerous divisions of spirituality, and is often misinterpreted.

Abigail Williams utilizes the power of the Bible and the court [which is based on the Bible] to bring devastation upon all of those who have crossed her. Likewise, such actions could easily have parallels drawn between events happening today. Any person who abuses another person’s beliefs or authority is as terrible as they could be now and as they would be in 1692. Certainly, society frowns upon arresting and executing people simply by hear say, but it currently takes similar and varied forms in the present. Unrest and conflict over what group belongs where, who deserves what rights and what the environment is coming to is pasted across the news. It would come as no surprise if such turmoil was to be disdained by the world tomorrow.

Ignorance is a constant in human history right alongside discrimination and pettiness. It almost seems like some people are not happy unless everyone is assimilated into their own mode of existence. Danforth, who felt that Gods’ will was that the girls accused the followers of Satan, barely considered that he may be wrong in some form. Such a lack of knowledge prevails even now, where one person or particular groups speak out against those they see as wrong. Everyone must be alike in some way for such groups to be fully pleased unless they themselves are abolished or resolved.

Civilization may never cure all of its faults; it may simply dress the open wounds with righteous salve and discover new defects or open old scars. No matter what is absolved or altered it still may reappear again despite better intentions. Undoubtedly, individuals will look back upon us as we look upon those from the past, shaking our collective heads in disgust. The only hope is that every time that society looks back and changes, it will change for the betterment of mankind.

There are plenty of other books out there that contain witchcraft and magic in them, yet religious leaders don't attack them. Plenty of our fairy tales contain mentioning of magic, but those are a perfectly acceptable thing to read to our children. Most of the fairy tales that contain magic are aimed at a much younger demographic than those of the Harry Potter series. If we take the same reasoning that we take with Harry Potter, than we should all get together and have a good old fashion book burning and try to undue the damage that has already been done.

When it comes to the issue of Harry Potter and Satan using them to draw young kids into witchcraft and away from the Lord, it makes me want to hurt myself since the whole idea is riddled with fallacies. The “witchcraft” in Harry Potter is completely different from that of real witchcraft or Wicca. Many followers of Wicca itself denounced Harry Potter since it gives people a false portrayal of what it really it is. Anyone who compares the witchcraft in Harry Potter to Wicca. is either functionally retarded, or knows nothing about the book series at all except that is contains magic and is popular.

That brings me to my next point, Harry Potter's popularity. I think that's one of its main reason it's been attacked by religion and religious leaders. Religion has always condemned what's popular. Look at rock and role, people thought it was the end of our youth. Same goes for comic books, radio, and TV. The church has always feared what's new. Its always had an opinion on what popular and new, even it doesn't concern them in the least bit.

Many people will defend Harry Potter with the morals and good teachings it possesses If you've even. Some people however, twist this defense into an offense. The people who do this have it ingrained into their very soul that Harry Potter will give birth to the end of the world and inspire the some young kid to eventually become the anti-Christ. They say Satan puts this small grain of truth and morality in it in order to deceive us even further. Honestly, if these people weren't condemning Harry Potter, they would be condemning something else, these people are just bigots.

There are plenty of other books out there that contain witchcraft and magic in them, yet religious leaders don't attack them. Plenty of our fairy tales contain mentioning of magic, but those are a perfectly acceptable thing to read to our children. Most of the fairy tales that contain magic are aimed at a much younger demographic than those of the Harry Potter series. If we take the same reasoning that we take with Harry Potter, than we should all get together and have a good old fashion book burning and try to undue the damage that has already been done.

What really makes me sick about the people who have nothing better to do than to condemn Harry Potter, is that they are hypocritical. They condemn Harry Potter because it contains Harry Potter and turns the morals and principals it teaches into seeds of the devil's deceit. Yet they praise Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia because of their Christian symbolism. If you applied the same reasoning to these series the one they do to Harry Potter, then we ought to build a time machine, go back and time, and stone Tolkien and Lewis for such blasphemy. Because following this logic, they are even worse. They dare to mix Christianity with witchcraft and sorcery! Hypocrites I say!

Most of the arguments people present as to why Harry Potter is wrong and evil are either stupid, full of bias, or full hypocrisy. So we should either start concerning ourselves with something more important than warding of the so called evils of Harry Potter, or get to work on a time machine.

I found that Edmund was my favorite in the entire book, besides I also liked the lion ''Aslan'' he seemed troubled at first. They should have kept that going through out the book, which would have been better. Anyway, the four kids enter a world unlike their own, but soon learn that a terrible evil has plagued the lands for the past hundred years. ''The witch'' who by the way is supposes to be a giant as well.
The four set off on an epic adventure to rid the evil of the land, of which none want a part of in the first place. They battle beasts they never thought possible to an ever growing battle scene near the end of the book.

The Film

I really liked it, until I saw the film which wasn't as good but the acting should have been better. To bad there isn't a film section, I could go on. The Witch was great but not perfect, if the right actress was chosen the character would have been even better.

Back to the Book

Edmund learns his lesson and discovers that it was he that was betrayed since the witch planned on betraying him from the beginning. It suited her for her own gain, as for the other three siblings they make friends with the animals of the world and help them fight for their freedom.

In addition to irony and excitement, this book also has parts in it that keep the reader from getting to the climax straight away, thus inclining the excitement even more. For example, in one chapter, somebody close to Harry Potter (the main character) dies during a fight, and they had to escape. The author then tells about how abnormal it was, that, instead of using a wand, a great wizard like Harry Potter would bury a body the old fashioned way: with a shovel. After this, through patience, for about 2 chapters, the book describes the area, which they chose to hide out in, against the evil wizard. It is also good to mention, the intensity with which the dark wizard drives throughout the story, as he is trying to get his pound of flesh which he had been waiting for, for over 10 years.

Although some people would argue that this is a bad thing, and that they should just get on with the rest of the book instead of describing something like that, nothing could be further from the truth; in fact, it is absurd to think that making a story descriptive would be a bad thing. The more the story slows down, the more exciting it will be for the reader when it speeds up again. This book has about as much of this, as there can be in a story. Which is what makes it perfect. It can also be mentioned that there is not a lot of sangfroid in the thoughts of the kids. Most of the time, the main character is trying to get some vitriolic humor out of the events happening. This really adds some more excitement on to it.

On the other hand, one thing a good critic might argue is that the book pushes the limits on describing events. There are a few places in the book that are dry; they are mostly trying to urge the reader to imagine the area/territory that they are in. For example, if they were to hide out in a forest, the book would tell you what kind of trees were around them, flowers, and if any animals were in the area. In chapter nineteen of the book, entitled “The Silver Doe,” they are hiding in a grassy, forest area, and, in my perspective, the author spends too much time describing the area. If the reader is reading the book for excitement, he will not enjoy hearing about how many bushes and trees there are around the kids, and talking about how tenuous the surrounding area is.

This book can be something everybody who's into fantasy should read, because of all the excitement and irony in it. Through reading this, the reader will gain some understanding on what it feels like to lose a loved one. This is a good every day lesson, because tragedies can happen anytime, anyplace, and to anybody. The book gets 5 stars because of the excitement it causes.

Through an opening in a wall at their school two young students, Eustace and Jill, enter a passage into Narnia. They are given a mission by Aslan, the mighty lion, to find the missing prince, Prince Rilian, son of the old king, Caspian. They are given clues which are to help them find Rilian. These clues were 1: Eustace will meet an old friend to whom he must greet immediately, 2: They must journey till they reach the ruined city of the giants, 3: they will find writing on a stone; follow the commands on the stone, 4: The man who asks them to do something in the name of Aslan is the prince.

When Eustace and Jill are traveling in the forest on the mountain they continually argue. They are literally blown off the mountain and land in a distant city. They converse with an owl and are later carried off by him to a meeting place where there were numerous intelligent owls. The owls help Jill and Eustace by flying them to the land of the Marsh-Wiggles, who were “a people who like privacy.” They lived by “little islands covered with countless channels of water.” They meet a solemn Marsh-Wiggle named Puddleglum who is “all arms and legs”. He had “greeny-gray hair over his large ears, had a sharp nose, and was with rather sunken cheeks.” He desires to help them and they let him join in their quest.

Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum travel together to the seemingly bottomless gorge where they come across frightening giants. They proceed to a giant bridge where they greet a strange knight in black and a young woman, both on horseback. This encounter may seem meaningless but is involved with the story later on. The black knight is actually the prince and the woman is a witch. They stop at a city called Harfang. Harfang is no ordinary city but a home to seemingly peaceful giants. However, these giants were actually scheming against Eustace and Co. the entire time.

While running away from the cunning giants they fall into a dark tunnel which slopes significantly downward. They are surprised to see hundreds of thousands of different creatures (mainly gnomes) living in a dark, underground kingdom. Again, Eustace and Jill are continually arguing. They talk with the same knight they saw on the bridge. They learn that every night he becomes wild and mad. So each night, they would tie him to a silver chair in order to restrain his rampage. While they are in the room of the rampaging knight he fulfills clue given by Aslan by speaking the words “in the name of Aslan” that identified him as the prince. The prince had been put under a spell by a witch (the lady next to him at the bridge) and the silver chair continued to renew the spell. The prince destroys the chair by using his sword and the curse is lifted.

After the spell is broken, the witch enters the room and tries to place a curse confuse them by hypnotizing them. However, they resist her spell by enabling pain and the prince kills her. They journey through the tunnels with a meager amount of light. They make it out of the underground kingdom and into a fruitful land with peaceful inhabitants. Here they are healed of their injuries and Rilian returns home. Jill and Eustace are then sent back to their school.

The connection I found between the setting and character study was that every time the setting is comfortable, Jill and Eustace get along with each other. Whenever the setting is uncomfortable, they have a hard time getting along.

Jill and Eustace were in a “very lonely forest” and “there was not a breath of wind, there was a sort of background of immense silence.” While they were here Eustace talked to Jill in an unkind way by saying, “What are you doing Pole? Come back- blithering idiot!”

They were underground in a “hot, dirty cave” and “it was a very sad place”. It was also a “very nasty place” and “it was hot. Jill felt she was being smothered.” This place “was full of a dim, drowsy radiance.” This place was almost unbearable to Jill, “And when, as they went on, the cave got lower and narrower, and when, at last, the light-bearer stood aside, and the gnomes, one by one, stooped down (all except the smallest ones) and stepped into a little dark crack and disappeared, she felt she could bear it no longer. "I can"t go in there, I can't! I can't! I won't' she (Jill) panted.'” Eustace tried to calm Jill down while there are in this place but Jill responded, “Oh, you don't understand. I can't,” wailed Jill. Again we see Eustace and Jill struggling to get along.

I think what C.S. Lewis was trying to show was that the things around you, both physical things and people can alter how you think and act. Eustace and Jill's actions and thoughts are indeed altered by their surrounding environment.

The Mountain of Aslan, at the beginning and end of the story, is the Mountain of God because Aslan is God. Aslan is shown to be God because when Eustace “set his teeth and drove the thorn into the Lion's paw. And there came out a great drop of blood, redder than all the redness that you have ever imagined. And it splashed over the body of the dead King. And the King began to be changed. His white beard turned to yellow and his wrinkles were smoothed, and his eyes opened, and suddenly he leaped up and stood before them- a very young man.” Jesus Christ died for us and his death (blood) saved us from sins.

Because we were saved from our sins we will be born again or renewed and we will become better than we were before. Jesus, the Son, is God so his blood is God's blood. Therefore, Aslan must be God because he uses the blood of himself to renew the dead king and make him born again. Also Aslan says, “He has died. Most people have, you know. Even I have.” This proves that C.S. Lewis was trying to point to Jesus' death because Aslan tells us that he has also died. And because he is living then he has resurrected.

Eustace and Jill are at the Mountain of God, the dwelling place of God, at the beginning and end of the story which means that they have been reborn and become better people by confronting Aslan at the mountain for a second time( Christ's second coming, they have matured. This is true because the Mountain Of God symbolizes Heaven and when we are born again by God we go to Heaven. This is what I think C.S. Lewis was trying to get at. However, we are Catholics and do not believe in being “reborn”. C.S. Lewis was Protestant so he had different beliefs.

In conclusion, this book was meant to tell us that we must allow ourselves to be continually converted by God. We cannot allow our environment or our culture of death to influence us in anyway. If that happens, we will not be able to open ourselves to God After they have already been influenced by their environment, they go through the process of opening themselves up to God when they are being taken care of by the Dwarves and the Centaurs by giving them food, water, and shelter because it as scarce in the tunnels and be converted. Eustace and Jill began their journey on the mountain to represent that we all come from God and to return to God.