A lot of prejudicial or exlusionary behaviour is invisible if you're not the one consciously committing it.
I do not make lewd comments to women on the bus, or catcall schoolgirls from my car, but I believe it happens (or every woman I know is lying).
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If you're shortlisted for a job, you don't need to think about the people who weren't, or why.
When you're let into a club you don't see what happens to the person behind you in the queue.
You sit on the Tube, you don't have to wonder who couldn't get to the platform.
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You'll never know who didn't get a place at your university, or who was turned down for an acting job in this play, or how the other person in the waiting room got treated by your doctor.
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So the concept of "privilege" as I understand it is shining a light on those moments:
When you got waved through, accepted, shown respect, or even just ignored as not needing attention.
And someone else didn't...
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Because an assumption was made about their skin colour, appearance, body type, sexuality, whatever...
Or a need they have was never taken into account.
And you did not face the same assumption or the same obstacle.
5/5
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The extent to which the Witches cause rather than predict M's tragedy is deliberately ambiguous. And that's entirely Shakespearean: his tragedies always deal in blurred lines between fate, individual agency and outside influence.
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Shakespeare uses foreshadowing and verbal echoes to create the effect that the Witches are influencing events. We might say they create a pattern of events.
In Act 1 Sc 1 their line "fair is foul and foul is fair" is rich with meaning for the play as a whole.
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And of course, their influence over Macbeth is demonstrated when his first line in the play is "So foul and fair a day I have not seen" (Act 1 Sc 3).
The First Witch's speech in Act 1 Sc 3 is also worth exploring for its foreshadowing:
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Thinking about SLEEP and SLEEPLESSNESS in Macbeth.
Sleep is mentioned 34 times in the play. Sleep represents what we today might call "mental health": rationality, clear thought, natural order.
"Balm of hurt minds...Chief nourisher in life's feast", indeed (Act 2 Sc 2)
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Sleeplessness, conversely, is the sign of a damaged mind, of corruption, of the influence of evil.
In fact, the motif of sleeplessness is introduced in 1:3 by the First Witch as she plans to torture a sailor:
"Sleep shall neither night nor day / hang upon his penthouse lid"
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The first character to experience sleeplessness in the play is Banquo:
"A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers,
Restrain in me the cursèd thoughts that nature
Gives way to in repose." (2:1)
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The influence of the mystery / whodunnit genre on An Inspector Calls is under-recognised. The formula, of a detective arriving at a well-to-do house with a family of unlikeable characters, was well established by 1945.
This was the era of Agatha Christie!
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Christie was already writing for the stage by 1945 and in her fiction had already begun to experiment with the genre: including, for example, Murder on the Orient Express whose punchline is *SPOILER* that every suspect with a motive helped to kill the victim.
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AIC uses the conventions of the genre to create its structure and tension. We know that all the Birlings (and Gerald) will be somehow related to the girl's death...but how? The first audiences probably expected that one of them was directly responsible or involved...
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Act 1 Sc 2
SOLDIER: "His brandish'd steel / Which smoked with bloody execution."
The soldier's account of Macbeth's exploits in battle establish him as a fierce warrior capable of bloody violence.
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The play sets up a contrast between Macbeth's skill and savagery in battle, shedding the blood of countless enemies, and his doubt and self-torment over killing one man when it's the King himself.
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"Blood" changes its meaning throughout the play: in battle, blood is a symbol of patriotism and heroism. Duncan tells the soldier his wounds "smack of honour". But later blood becomes a symbol of guilt and inescapable consequences.
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