Peer Review

Research Paper Boccia 1

Gianna Boccia

Professor Brown

English 1B

May 1, 2021

Guilty By Association

In the different stories that were read throughout this semester Medea by Euripi-

des, Oedipus the King by Sophocles, Macbeth by William Shakespeare, and Tracks by

Louise Erdrich they all had similar topic which was guilt and suffering. Each story has

its own personal interpretation of how guilt has entered their life and how the suffering

took ahold of their lives as well. These four stories told different stories compared to

one another, but also told a story about life action’s and their consequences that may

come along with those action’s.

In the different book’s the theme of the different stories are how their ac-

tions caused many different issues. Some issues being the guilt that they

felt throughout the story, or the suffering they made other feels after mak-

ing certain actions. One other main point told throughout the stories is

how different actions can possibly lead up to guilt trips as for instance in

Macbeth she felt a different type of guilt than how the Native American’s

did after selling all of their land. One last point is how important it is to

also work on those actions, and try to make them better.

In these stories there are many different examples of how guilt is used through-

out the stories, but also in real life situations as well. In the MacBeth book she had

never felt bad as all of her actions until after the fact that she had killed her kid’s they

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had begun haunting her as MacBeth begun to feel the guilt of killing her own kids her

conscious began to settle in and that is how she began seeing things. MacBeth’s story

is completely different from the other stories as guilt is used in different forms.

In the different stories their many different feelings drawn up from each story, in

the story of MacBeth their was feelings of sadness, loss, and grievance in this story the

main character didn’t feel much at first but then soon begun to be haunted by your

loved ones that she had killed, she then began to suffer from her conscious whereas in

Tracks the Native Americans lost everything that they had built due to the white people

moving onto their land. They had different feelings such as despair, loss, and inhumane

the people in this story were stripped of all that known and all that they had worked for

as after all these years of living a certain way they began to suffer to the white man’s

new style of life. In the Medea story she had suffered from the pain and loss of Jason

and as MacBeth Medea as well murder’s her kids. These stories bring guilt and suffer-

ing into morals as to our consciousness and when you continue living on and having to

live with the decisions you have made.

Your conscious is what makes the good from the bad people in the world, in

MacBeth and all of these books we were shown what it’s like when our conscious does

kick in. In each story each person felt a different type of way and based off the story it

was told from a different side. In MacBeth it was shown from her perspective as the

killer as someone who did have to suffer, where as in Tracks you are shown from the

inside and although the Native American’s were the one’s suffering the only one’s who

were guilty were the white men taking over their land. Guilt is a feeling that our con-

scious gives us when we know we’ve done something wrong it goes along side with

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morals in MacBeth her conscious ate her from the inside out as I would say she began

to hear and see things as in her conscious she began to realize she was not being

haunted by her kid’s but for what she did. In the story Tracks you got to see that some

people have no morals as the white men continued to take and take more the Native

American’s felt naive and lost all control.

As recently talked about guilt trips come from within your consciousness, as

human beings we all have sense of right and wrong. Within these stories the guilt trip

the character’s may go on may be in different settings and different ways that they in-

terpret them, but they all go through them in their own state. In the Medea story she

begins to set in with reality and then kills her kids as she felt guilty for her actions and

believed she got Jason killed. In the story MacBeth she didn’t begin to feel guilt until

after she killed her kid’s and at first her it wasn’t because she had killed them as she

her actions were out of spite and she thought they were justified. In the story Tracks

the white men had truly seen nothing wrong with what they were doing and still to this

day Native American people are getting paid back for their land property that we stole

from them. In the end the guilt ended up eating them up in the inside although they had

learned how their actions not only affected them but the people around them.