Mihaela D. Dima
Unit of Study: The Power of Stories: The Spells We Cast, The Monsters We Create
“Rem tene verba sequentur (Get hold of the matter and the words will follow)-Cato
“There are no monsters, but all of them are real” (Surekha Davies)
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes” (Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1)
The unit’s essential questions:
- What role does belief in the supernatural play in human decision making?
- How do the stories we create and tell decide who is a “monster” in society?
- Who is the real monster in Macbeth”? What makes them a monster?
This unit’s exploration started with a question: “How do I get my students to enjoy reading more?” “How do I make them fall in love with reading again?” For the past few years, especially with the presence of smart phones in the classroom, it has been increasingly difficult to get students to read and talk about their reading in those excited voices I remembered from my own childhood years. This was the premise for me when I began exploring our seminar readings for “Making the Invisible Visible”. I wondered: “What was it that intrigued me the most, as a learner, during the seminar sessions?”
One thing kept coming to the surface: stories. I was intrigued learning about Galileo’s fascination with the moon, the various collections in the Cabinets of Curiosities and why they often featured crocodiles hanging from the ceiling, the stories of women dissected for science and revealed as “mysteries” in Vesalius’s times, or Albertus Seba’s Hydra's striking “monstrous” visual. Yes, these readings featured a lot of scientific research and cataloguing, painstaking observations and recordings, but also a touch of the “invisible”, the supernatural that explored curiosities, monsters, anomalies or creations beyond imagination.
Thinking forward and forging these connections between “the invisible and the visible”, I revisited those stories that powered up my own imagination early on in my childhood, beginning with the stories of my childhood (Grimm’s fairy tales, Julia Donaldson’s fantastic Gruffalo narratives, Margaret Brown’s “Goodnight Moon”) moving onto my formative years with C.S. Lewis’s fantastic worlds of magic and then onto Shakespeare’s world of wit and powerful human emotions.
As readers and human beings, we are often fascinated with stories of the supernatural, what we cannot see or understand, what is invisible that becomes “possible” to exist because of our power of imagination and creativity in action. We love stories of witches, goblins, monsters, vampires, and wizards, all hanging between the realm of good versus evil. We feel empowered and distressed trying to determine their ethical significance and our own role in establishing their function in society. Thus, in creating this unit, I wanted to bring all these considerations to my students’ attention and have them start questioning the power of stories in our lives, with a specific focus on stories of monsters. What are “monsters”? Who created them? In what ways do culture, religion and historical background shape our understanding of what makes a monster?Hannah Warren, in “Writing the Grotesque” extends these questions by expressing: “I’m interested in how we determine what defines them—the monstrous other opposed to our definitions of selfhood—as well as what defines we and us. What about a monster makes it a monster, and how do we go about solidifying that meaning?” (poetryfoundation).
To further explore this concept in shaping the unit, I read the book “Humans: A Monstrous History” by Surekha Davies. In this book, Davies is looking at how humans have used this concept to define, explain, categorize and vilify people, ideas and concepts that did not fit into what was deemed “acceptable”. She calls this process “monster making” arguing that it “reveals assumptions, agendas, interpretations, of those who saw others as monsters and who actively framed them as less than or threats to an imagined normal or default” (Davies, Introduction 4).
With this framework in mind, I narrowed down the unit’s essential questions to: “What role does belief in the supernatural play in human decision making?” “How do the stories we create and tell decide who is a 'monster' in society?” and “Who is the real monster in Macbeth? What makes them a monster?”
I also decided on Macbeth by William Shakespeare as the core text for the unit because of its complex questions about destiny and supernatural forces ,and because of its natural lending to playful acting/discourse strategies, perfect for a beginning of the year unit. Macbeth is a powerful play because it allows us to delve into the human psyche and forces influencing human decisions. Do we- as humans- have complete reign over our decisions or are there “other” mysterious, supernatural forces impacting us, ones we cannot escape? The tragedy of Macbeth tells the story of a loyal friend and soldier blinded by ambition into murder. As readers, we are faced with the dilemma of truly understanding who is to blame for the tragedy unfolding in front of our eyes. What makes someone take another person’s life? To what extent are they accountable for their actions as opposed to being forced by the invisible forces of a destiny they cannot escape? These all lead to the text overarching question: “Who is the real monster in Macbeth”? “What makes them a monster?” Is the monster Macbeth because he is the one handling the dagger, the instrument of death? Is the monster lady Macbeth, as she is the instigator of the killing and the descent into madness? Is it “the weird sisters”, the forces from beyond that act as the invisible but alluring siren songs of death? Juhász Tamás, a Shakespeare scholar, makes the point, “Of all Shakespearean dramas, the concept of fate and destiny seems most applicable in this particular play. The play is about evil” (59). Workings of fate and destiny are seen most obviously in relation to the witches, but are also present in the characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth” (qtd in Spenser). So we wonder: Are these characters monsters? What factors determine a person’s “monstrosity? Is it them or others’ perception of them that factors into this definition of monstrosity?As the first unit of the year, this curriculum unit will allow students to explore the power of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, as a story holding the tension between the visible and the invisible, the good and the evil. Through intentional discourse and writing strategies, students will determine “the real monster” in the play, synthesizing evidence from the play, and additional texts.
In this unit, the students will read the main text of the play using Shakespeare & Company’s “Discovering Macbeth” scripts and engage in active reading strategies. They will also delve into the historical context of the play and the controversies surrounding the various performances of the play (legends of the different spells cast on the play and the actors performing that led to various productions plagued by fear, accidents and financial downfalls).
As enrichment, honor students may also read (and view) excerpts from Oscar Wilde’s “Picture of Dorian Grey” to investigate the tensions in an individual that come when a person’s own actions or actions of others cause separation or “monstrosity”. Using various evidence from the texts, students will frequently engage in Socratic Seminar discussions to bring nuance and understanding to the essential questions of the unit and form their own interpretations of “monsters” and “monster making” in society. Surekha Davies in her book “Humans: A Monstruous History” delves into this process of “monster-making” as “the stories societies tell about who they think isn’t normal or typical” (Introduction). Additionally, students will explore excerpts from the book: Power Ambition Glory by Steve Forbes and John Prevas, the article “The Concept of Evil” from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the poem “Fate” by Durlene Westfall.
Through these texts, the students will practice close reading strategies (annotation) that are purposeful and inquiry based. They will frequently write in response to specific journal prompts that will enable them to make connections to real-life issues, text-to-text connections, and, as a result, deepen their understanding of what a “monster” is in society. Lesson plans will include focused reading (with specific reading strategies and acting games reading the Macbeth script to promote inquisitive performance), in-class discussions, “write to think” activities and reflections. Through this unit, students will analyze and reflect how stories often reveal our proclivities in separating “others” who are “different” and justify unfair or unjust actions based on those biases or judgments. How do the stories we create and tell ourselves lead to “monster making”? Students will get a chance to explore the power of words (connotation/denotation) and stories through acting, role-playing, performing, and reflecting through this recursive process. At the end of the unit, the students will be able to show their understanding of the play through a performance assessment. This assessment will ask them to evaluate who the monster is in Macbeth and the forces creating this “monster” in them using evidence from the texts and discussions in class.
Rationale
After Covid, the students became more reluctant to speak out in class, to engage in discourse with one another and communicate their ideas openly. The use of phones (with open access to texting and social media) only added to this already problematic issue. This academic year (2025-2026) my school introduced Yonder pouches and mandated a return to a cell-free classroom; thus, the possibilities for engagement and discourse increased exponentially. Students learn through exploration and inquiry, which is why this unit will encourage them not only to read a difficult text, but to also take risks sharing ideas, posing questions for reflection and exploring the power of a Shakesperean story through play. Additionally, AI has brought in a lot of changes in the way students prepare homework and shortcut assignments, often at the detriment of reading. It is my goal this year to encourage students to read more, to rediscover the patient art of discovering a good story. What better way to do that than with a classic Shakesperean story?
The students will be challenged to explore an enduring story through the power of words and the timeless influence of its message. They will learn to examine the ways in which a character uses double meaning words to manipulate and to gain power and control over others. They will also understand how- in order to create a good story- an author uses their words to create characters that the audience can relate to and form strong attachments to. Some students may dislike Lady Macbeth for the way in which she manipulates her husband, while some may feel he is at fault for not standing his ground. Good characters and plotlines have us empathize with others and understand our own flawed condition. Through close text analysis and discussion, the students will gain an appreciation of reading a classic text, bringing a story alive, and developing an individualized understanding of what a “monster” is in society. This is in alignment with the district’s requirements to get students to read full-length, complex texts and interact with these texts through different reading strategies.
My students are sophomores and reflect diverse needs when it comes to their reading levels, writing abilities, and discourse performance. Moreover, they come from very diverse ethnic backgrounds and will need context for understanding Shakespeare. Making connections between the texts and their own lives and getting them to move from the literal to thematic level will allow for a good grasp of Shakespearean language. CP level students will need more scaffolding for reading the text as a performance and building academic vocabulary to respond to the text, while Honor level students will find more enrichment with additional texts assigned for homework.
