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Ambition And Ambition In Macbeth

Decent Essays

Death, insanity, despair: these are the consequences of ambition gone awry. Devastating downfalls can befall a heroic character if they are too ambitious. Ambitious characters are common in literature, and the consequences of their ambition are often the moral or lesson of their stories. Ambition can be a negative thing and it can lead to negative events, and for that reason, it is the biggest character flaw heroes have in Anglo-Saxon literature.
If a character is ambitious, it means they have a strong desire for something, which is often material objects, power, or recognition. When desire is immovable, it quickly blocks out reason and becomes a problem or flaw. Not only is ambition a personal flaw for literary heroes, but it also affects the characters around them. In order to fulfill desires, a hero may eliminate any character that happens to get in their way. This is likely to happen in the case of a character that desires power. A common plot in literature is the story of a character who wants to become some type of powerful figure, such as a king. This is the plot of Macbeth, where the main character Macbeth is driven to murder his king, Duncan, in order to become King of Scotland himself. “I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls on the other,” (I, vii, 25-28) Macbeth describes his own ambition as he contemplates killing Duncan. Ambition was a major flaw for Macbeth. It is what causes him to

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