Comparing Ambition In Shelly's Macbeth 'And Frankenstein'

Ambition is often the driving force in one’s life. It can have an extremely dominant impact on not only yourself, but also many people in your surroundings. You have the ability to control if the outcomes either have a lasting negative or positive effect. When a goal requires determination and hard work to complete, personal morals often take a back seat to the aspiration of accomplishing the goal. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, it is clear that like many other great leaders, Macbeth exemplifies the necessary leadership virtue of ambition. Macbeth’s ambition does not just drive him to do great things. It in fact controls him. The playwright explores the idea of how an individual’s ambition can cause them to deceive others, make irrational

When Macbeth comes back with the bloody daggers, he immediately feels guilt Lady Macbeth responds to his guilty emotion by exclaiming, “Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead. Are but as pictures: ‘tis the eyes of childhood that fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal; for it must seem their guilt” (2.2. 53-57). When Lady Macbeth says, “for it must seem their guilt”, she is so determined to cover up the murder that she will even bloody other people, to blame it on someone else. When Lady Macbeth says “If he do bleed, I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal; for it must seem their guilt”, she is saying that she will go so far as to put Duncan’s blood on the servants’, so it looks like they killed him. After Macbeth kills Duncan, Macbeth is looking over Duncan’s dead body, and he addresses how gory his body is, saying, “Who can wise, amazed, temp’rate, and furious, neutral, in a moment? No man. Th’ expedition of my violent love outrun the pauser, reason. Here lay Duncan, his silver skin laced with his golden blood,a nd his gashed stabs looked like a breach in nature for ruin’s wasteful entrance; there the murderers, steeped in the colors of their trade, their daggers unmannerly breached with gore. Who could refrain, that had a heart to love, and in that heart courage to make love’s known?”

Following the murder, feelings of guilt begin to disturb Macbeth. After looking at his own hands Macbeth says, "This is a sorry sight". When Macbeth looks at his bloody hands he acts completely shaken and does not believe they belong to him and seems completely traumatized by his own actions. The sight of Duncan's blood cannot help but make Macbeth feel guilty about the brutal murder he has just committed; therefore saying it was a sorry sight. However, Macbeth's true remorse is portrayed through the last line in the scene.

Too much ambition can be disastrous. The word “ambition”generally has a positive connotation, however, it is not always a positive thing Too much of a “good thing”, in this case ambition, can be catastrophic. Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, and Tim Burton’s film, The Nightmare before Christmas, use characters, conflict, and plot events to convey the universal theme that too much ambition can alter one’s judgement of right and wrong, causing them them to becomes treacherous or deceitful to achieve their goals.

Napoleon Bonaparte once said “Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.”. Ambition like Napoleon has a complex legacy, it is either considered a vice or a virtue. However, the idea of ambition creating a great characters is not new. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Oscar Wilde’s The picture of Dorian Gray, these authors both employ ambition to create tragic protagonists driven by ambition to do whatever it takes achieve their goals, no matter what the cost may be. Both Oscar Wilde and William Shakespeare show how ambition can twist and turn people into monsters in their works; however, their writings differ because Wilde believes

Macbeth displays ambition by the way he talks and his actions over the course of the play. Ambition is a strong desire to do or achieve something that takes hard work and dedication. In the play Macbeth, Macbeth has strong desire to be successful out on the battlefield and also in his pursuit to take over as king. Macbeth’s ambition is detrimental to himself and that is shown throughout the play. Macbeth’s strong desires and aspirations end up hurting him after all and the bad things he had done eventually catch up to him.

Ambition has been a driving force of humanity since the beginning of time. Emotions have always had a strong influence on humanity, specifically emotions that tend towards the ruin of others and the gain another. Throughout the history of humanity there have been many examples of people abusing their position of power, to gain something they more than likely did not deserve. Whether it be Hitler and his repulsive ascension to becoming chancellor of Germany, or Kim Jong Un’s obsession with obtaining nuclear weapons at the cost of the people, humanities struggle with greed is unceasing. No one better illustrates this unrelenting thirst for power more than Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Macbeth is a good, brave, and beloved man at the beginning of the play with the end of his latest battle heralding a new title for him. Fate though, seems to have different plans for the good, albeit, ambitious Macbeth. He is told by the 3 weird sisters that he will one day become king. Thus igniting the flame of greed within Macbeth, signaling his descent into madness and the guilt he feels towards the deeds he has done. Lady Macbeth is much the same in the sense that once she knew of Macbeths own ambition, it hatched her own deep seeded desire for the crown as well. However, there various similarities end with the death of Duncan and the way they both deal with the guilt over what they did. In the play Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have similarly great ambition, but this intense avarice in the end leads to their ruin in differing ways.

Ambition. It is a vital characteristic required for an individual wanting achieve their goals. Being ambitious alone is crucial to success as it is the drive that propels one toward it. It is and always will be a human trait. Perhaps that is why the theme of ambition has been so prevalent in literature. It is the dominant theme in The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald, William Shakespeare 's Macbeth, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller and The Wolf of Wall Street by Jordan Belfort. In this essay, I will discuss the two ways over ambition can cause an individual 's downfall. The first is setting unattainable goals which we can see in The Great Gatsby and Death of a Salesman. The second is trying to achieve your goals unethically, seen in Macbeth and in The Wolf of Wall Street . The idea of ambition and striving for achievement is highly valued by our society today. However, many people forget that too much of anything can be catastrophic.

The theme of ambition is portrayed in three vast different ways between these text. They have many things in common, yet also have many things that differ between one another. In Shakespeare’s play, “Macbeth”, he uses ambition and loyalty hand-in-hand to provide a sense of relatability, while in “Ambition” by Edgar Albert Guest, he uses drive and motivation to portray his view of ambition. Finally, in “Aspiration”, by Emily Dickinson, she uses passion and longing for something to depict her view of ambition.

When the desire to achieve is greater than the foregone conclusion people begin to risk what they usually would not. Ambition is defined as a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work. In both Shakespeare's Macbeth and Jon krakauer's Into Thin Air ambition is what drives characters to achieve and to ignore consequences

He kills King Duncan while he is sleeping and brings the evidence out to greet his wife. When Lady Macbeth questions him about bringing the evidence out of the crime scene, he is in a state of shock. He says he can “go no more”(2.2.51) because he is “afraid to think what he has done”(2.2.53). Macbeth cannot begin to fathom what he has just done and what he is capable of. He asks if “great Neptune’s ocean can wash this blood clean from his hands”(2.2.60-63)because he is consumed with the thought that there is nothing that can clear his involvement from this deed.

The stories of “Macbeth” and Frankenstein are two texts depicting the life and tragic flaws of the two main characters, which bring them to an eventual downfall. Despite the different time periods that they were written in, both of the stories contain a dark and supernatural atmosphere that evokes feelings of terror in readers. “Macbeth” and Frankenstein share similar quests and tragic flaws. Macbeth was a ‘noble’ warrior who over ambitious which led to serious consequences. He also is highly influenced by those around him and eventually becomes a monster himself. Frankenstein is a knowledge hungry man who lusts for any new information in the world of sciences. Both characters

Everyone has a since of ambition built inside of them. Your inner self determines whether you keep it under the surface or let it all come out. In the play Macbeth ambition gets the best of the main character. This is also evident in the novel Frankenstein with its main character. Both of these characters were fallen victims of their own inner ambitious ways. Ambition in both of these books is key to the understanding of each character’s actions.

Ambition is a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work. In Williams Shakespeare 's Macbeth the characters Lady Macbeth and Macbeth have a strong desire to ascend the throne and they are determined to do whatever it takes in order to achieve this goal, including deceiving and killing those they are closest to. The zeal of ambition predominately persuades both characters actions in Macbeth. Lady Macbeth portrays how the forces of ambition strike her to instil a powerful drive in her husband, also how she demonstrates an overweening pride and lack of morals in order to reach a goal and lastly how ambition leads Macbeth to betray those cares about most.