Hooray! Done with Kors and Peters!!

This was my first time reading Shakespeare on my own and I have to say it was a bit difficult to understand. The first scene was confusing, but it made some more sense once I read the second scene. There are a lot of characters in this play that all come up in the beginning, which made it difficult for me to remember who each one was. There were a few specific things that I didn’t understand in this act. I wondered how Miranda and Prospero were able to survive on this island only with their two servants. It wasn’t clear to me if Prospero’s magic was what was keeping them alive or not. I also didn’t understand why Prospero put Miranda to sleep when he started telling his story. And the last thing I was unsure about was why Prospero made a storm around the ship, but I’ve gathered that this probably going to explained later in the play and it’s an important part of the plot. If anybody can provide some clarification for me about the play, that would be awesome.

   This week we were also supposed to read the last chapter by Kors and Peters and I think it ended in the best way possible. I think it was great how we moved through all the different texts and ideas about witchcraft to the explanation of how the craze came to an end. I thought it was interesting that one of the main ideas that discounted those who believed in witchcraft was that they didn’t really understand God and the world he made. I would have thought this chapter would have been made up of educated men telling everybody that witchcraft was impossible. Instead it they attributed the belief in witchcraft to confusion and fear. Even though I thought disbelief and skepticism of witchcraft would have stemmed from logic, I found this chapter to very satisfying.