Significant Connections Intro

Ambition, Ambition is what we all have, good or bad. it can either control us or it pushes us to strive to be our best. In this speech, I will be talking about how ambition can be interloped with other texts such as Macbeth, Hamilton, Gattaca, and Ozymandias. Hamilton and Gattaca have similar ideas for ambition. Ozymandius and Macbeth have the same ambition, One type of ambition is controlled by morals and beliefs whereas one is dictated by others and can be twisted and derailed. I believe if humans don’t have barriers to overcome then they won’t know what it’s like to have to strive for something.

Ozymandius is about a king who’s kingdom has crumbled and fallen into pieces, with only a statue of him saying “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” This shows how his ambition was the death of his creations and his legacy. It says to “look on my works”, yet it is a baron desert as far as the eye can see. his ambition was his downfall because he was sought power by degrading others and being above them this relates to Macbeths. Macbeth sought to gain power by taking it from his peers and king.

Macbeths ambition was coarsed by his wife, Lady Macbeth. This was done by her telling him that he had to kill the king in order to gain power. As he killed to gain power and lied to get followers his ambition was twisted into something else. He was the “brave Macbeth” but at the end of the play it was “the tyrant” Macbeth. showing a clear downfall of his respect and stature as a human and as a king. As the play goes on we see his mental state deteriorate aswell causing his mind to slip into madness. Macbeths ambition is completley opposite to Vincent a man from the film called Gattaca. Vincent was born naturally which means he had disablities in a world of genetically enginered humans who were flawless with no disablities; but that wasn’t the only difference, vincent with his barriers had the ambition to become better whereas his peers lacked the ambition because they knew that they were born to be great and born for a specific purpose. Without barriers humans are doomed to fail where with barriers it causes us to strive to be better and we learn from our failures and grow as a person.

In the film, Gattaca directed by Andrew Niccol, one of the main themes of the story is how Eugenics is used to filter out people via their genetics and their physical strength. He does this by creating the idea that if you design your baby before it is conceived then it can have the absolute best genes from the two parents and have a strong immunity to most diseases. In Gattaca, a Character, Vincent is born without being genetically modified which means he has defects and his body is not the strongest but yet he pushes through his barriers and becomes Jerome Morrow which the people who work at Gattaca know him as the best of the best, Vincent then ultimately achieves his goal of going off of earth and traveling to other planets despite his defects and barriers. one example of his barriers is his heart defect, where he was meant to die a few years ago but he pushed through and became healthier meaning his heart could function a little bit better, and his heart was supposedly not healthy enough to ever survive the trip to titan. Vincent’s ambition helped him get to this point and did not lead him to his own demise because he worked hard and played fair to get to where he wanted to, His ambition was the thing that kept him motivated to strive to do more to work harder this corralates with Hamilton because his ambition moves him to do more and to keep moving throughout his life and they both were faced with adversity.

Hamilton is a musical based on the American Revolution and alexander hamilton, a man from the Caribbean who had established the first national bank and was at the right-hand side of the founding father, George Washington the first president. there’s a song in the musical which is called my shot, “Don’t be shocked when your history book mentions me I will lay down my life if it sets us free Eventually, you’ll see my ascendancy.” This is pointing out that no matter what happens hamilton will always push to become better and to achieve his goals. Hamiltons’ ambition is to leave a legacy behind and become a known figure for speaking against slavery and setting America free. Hamilton had multiple barriers blocking him, His home town was devastated by a hurricane, his father left him, his mother died and his cousin committed suicide. This leaves hamilton by himself and even after all this death surrounds him, he starts reading and writing and becomes a well-known figure in American history.

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