Thursday, February 15, 2024

I Thought It Was a Punctuation Mark

Read the following words spoken by Macbeth in the play aptly named Macbeth.  He is on his way to the king's room to kill him when he sees a dagger floating in the air in front of him:


Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand?
Come, let me clutch thee!
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.


What is the purpose of the apostrophe in the above lines?

a. to show which weapon Macbeth will use to commit a murder
b. to show Macbeth's unstable state of mind
c. to provide imagery for the audience to envision the background
d. to show that Macbeth is not a killer











Scroll down for the answer.




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Two things are helpful in getting this question correct.  One is having read the story previously and the other is to know what an apostrophe is.  An apostrophe is speaking to an object that has no capacity to respond (similar but the not the same as personification).  Knowing this will lead you to think that if he is talking to a dagger that floats before him and cannot be touched, he must be freaking out.  That will bring you to either b. or d.  If you've read the story, you know that Macbeth is indeed a killer.  He starts the play by chopping a man in half.  The correct answer is b.  

2 comments:

  1. An apostrophe is not just a punctuation mark. It is also a literary term that means to talk to something that is not able to talk back. Here, Macbeth is talking to an imaginary dagger, which cannot respond. That is the apostrophe.

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