Equivocation In Literature

The Importance of Equivocation Most people do not understand older literature. Literature like poems, plays, and sonnets. The language they used seems to sound like it is in a different language. High schoolers have the opportunity to completely tear apart an old piece of literature and find out every speck of literary devices used inside of it. Some of those literary devices may include alliteration, inversion, irony, allusion, personification, and equivocation. Many people may not know what equivocation means, but it means to have a double meaning. That double meaning can be shown through having reality and appearance different or having something being spoken and the person either meaning a different thing or one taking the words in a different
In Act 4 scene 3 Malcolm is trying to see if he can trust Macduff (4.3.178-243). Macduff asks about his family and Malcolm conceals the truth about his family and tells him they are well when in reality Macduff’s family has been murdered. Once Malcolm knows that he can trust Macduff, he tells Macduff about how his family has been killed and how he should use his anger that he feels into killing Macbeth. Malcolm has already created an army with 10,000 men ready to go to Dunsinane to kill Macbeth. Macduff agrees to do that and they head that way. If Malcolm had told Macduff in the beginning that his family was dead, Macduff could have been less willing to help kill Macbeth.
Another reasons for equivocation is you can make alliteration to occur which can help with sound devices and allow for sound devices to happen (Visual Thesaurus). For example in Act 1 scene 1 line 10-11 the witches say “Fair is foul and foul is fair, / Hover through the fog and filthy air”, some other words could have been placed here and the same meaning would come through (1.1.10-11). All the “f’s” could have been changed to other constants but the sound “fff” would not have had the effect that it