If you're attending the Ideafestival this year (and you should, you know) then you have the opportunity to sit in on the Power Lunch, hosted by Kris Kimel and attended/participated in by me. We'll be talking about power. That much you could probably figure out by the title. And since my contribution is from the linguistic and literary angle, I've been thinking a lot about the different characters and authors I've read over the years and how this theme of power plays out in different genres.
We could visit the Shakespearean characters; Lady Macbeth is hungry for power so she convinces her husband to kill his king, but after gaining power she goes insane and keeps seeing blood on her hands and ends up killing herself. Macbeth's fate was foretold by the three witches (those of the double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble) and he comes to a quick end. In fact, most of Shakespeare's characters who do something bad in order to gain power end up, well, dead. Hamlet's uncle, Hamlet's mother, Hamlet...Macbeth, Othello, Iago. All dead. But Shakespeare isn't the author I'm thinking of tonight. In fact, I'm thinking of several authors who deal with one very popular topic right now. Vampires!
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