Evergreen Circle works with the elderly in entertaining them for the hour that we are there for. Students are good.

Previous to this I had never had any service experience where we got to work with the people directly. My expectations were pretty generally positive thinking because I don’t think I had any specific expectations towards the service. Going in I was already comfortable because I was with people I knew and planning activities for people I didn’t. Being new this year, I appreciated knowing and getting closer to the people enrolled in this service as well. As we were planning, I realized to the extent that I needed and wanted the activity to work for those participating that I, unfortunately, didn’t do the greatest job on it as all the other ideas I had were too complicated and required too much equipment to either purchase or collected. This was the first time out of two for which I had to plan an activity and contrarily, for the second time, I was over prepared. Perhaps that was better as I ended up with some excess material I could use for other things or give back to those who needed it for planning a session.

This service confirmed that I could be prepared and productive if and when I wanted to. Otherwise, I think it showed the two extremes of which I could perform as well as a development of from one experience to another in terms of growth and improvement. In participating in carrying out other people’s planned sessions, I learnt of how far I could help someone as well as carry out a conversation minorly blocked by the language barrier we had as many could not speak English and I could not communicate in any other means but demonstration.

“Analyse the ways in Shakespeare evokes contradictory feelings towards his characters.”

Following the previous Shakespeare post, Macbeth has me contradicted. He is displayed as this character who seems so strangely brave in the first act. This is being challenged in the second act as he is “Lady Macbeth-ed” into killing Duncan, though the thought seed originated from him. The contradiction is of him pre- and post-murdering Duncan where he displays everything but bravery.

 

“Comment on the significance of dialogue and ensemble scenes in affecting mood and positioning the audience.”

The beginning of Scene 2 Act 3 envokes fear in an ominous way through having one character speak so much and so repetitively. This is the porter scene where he repeats, “Knock, knock. Who’s there?” (2-3,6,10,13) after the knocks, the audience can hear and answers himself differently every time. The first answer, with the question “Who’s there i’th’name of Beelzebub?”(3), was “Here’s a farmer that hanged himself on th’expectation of plenty,” (3-4) which mentions expectation and the devil through the name of Beelzebub. This scene, being before the murder of Duncan is known, is dramatically ironic as he describes gloom even before knowing.

The scene after Duncan’s murder where there is a huge ensemble of characters panicking envokes chaos through merely having so many people present on stage at one time. The audience does not know who to focus on because there is so much to focus on and so much rambling as well as speaking in unison. Saying, “Well contented,” before everyone exits the stage, save Malcolm and Donalbain, makes it an everyone speaks and then no one speaks moment.