Lady Macbeth's Uncontrolled Ambition

The word hamartia refers to a fatal flaw leading to the downfall of a tragic hero,

Ambition is an admirable trait that enabled famous writers and scholars to attain an unbelievable greatness. However, highly ambitious people often end up failing because they are unable to fill up an insatiable hole of greed that leads them to constant frustration and dissatisfaction. Just as an excessive ambition can start with malice, it can end in anguish and despair. In the play, Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, the main protagonist, Macbeth, and his wife, Lady Macbeth, demonstrate an ambition that has an exacerbating impact on them that slowly leads to the self-destruction and obliteration of people around. After Lady Macbeth clouded Macbeth’s mind, Macbeth killed a benevolent king Duncan. But even with crown and power, Macbeth spend his life in fear and anxiety, until the weight of the ambition was relieved by his downfall. Through Macbeth’s character, Shakespeare shows that the extreme ambition that was emerged out of ferocious passion could devour an individual’s moral goodness, which in turn would carve the path directly to the total misery. Possessing such ambition makes the individual live in a self-imposed fretfulness and expose the closest people under consequential threats.

‘Macbeth’ is a play in which a Lord and his Lady come into supreme power through acts of injustice and despicable inhumanities. In the play Macbeth there is no main focal theme that overrules the others; the play however has several underlying themes, namely there are important themes i.e. good and evil (like ying and yang), greed and power, guilt and conscience, fear, ambition – this leads to the murder of other people illustrating to the reader that even the most sane of people can result to character diminishing methods to get what they want. These particular themes are the most prominent and when closely looked at, it can help to understand characters and meanings behind the play. The theme of ambition is very important in this play,

An ambition for power can seem to be true perfection, but one should be careful what they wish for, because that power might be exactly what causes their downfall. In the play Macbeth written by William Shakespeare ambition plays a great role and is also a main theme. Ambition is often the motivating force in one's life. It is supposed to be the motivating factor that drives one towards success. The main character, Macbeth has ambition even though it leads him to his downfall. In contrast, Lady Macbeth pursues her goals with greater determination, yet she is less capable of withstanding the outcome of her actions. She becomes guilty which leads to her death since she becomes mentally ill and commits suicide, leaving Macbeth without any

One of the main themes in William Shakespeare's play, Macbeth is ambition. Ambition can build up a person as they drive towards a goal, but it can also cause a person to destruct. In the cases of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, ambition is a dangerous weapon with which they harmed many people. Ambition can be healthy and even beneficial usually, Shakespeare develops the idea that ambition is dangerous to oneself and others and leads to extreme repercussions. In the play, Macbeth, William Shakespeare explores the negative impacts of ambition on oneself and others when an individual’s motives are near sighted and selfish.

The pride and seize power of being a King is just a burden and nothing to Macbeth. It is undeniable that Lady Macbeth had a strong desire on early presence and power-hungry. Although Macbeth was driven through the persuasion of Lady Macbeth; the greed of power and his own ambition is what truly pushes Macbeth to fulfill his desire. The death of Lady Macbeth and the rapid change of his authority showed a strong connection between each other; causing Macbeth to fully understand the meaningless of life, where ones power and influence vanishes when the lifetime is over. This essay examines Macbeth’s soliloquy in Act 5 Scene 5 and the contrast between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth’s ambition in relation to his freewill, it closely examines how he describe his reaction and the nature of life, and finally it focuses on how the death of Lady Macbeth foreshadows the downfall of Macbeth

Macbeth: Theme Macbeth shows the theme as he is ambitious throughout the entire play of Macbeth by William Shakespeare. As the play goes on, Macbeth has murderous thoughts and he becomes over-confident in himself which leads to his downfall. Many of the characters see how Macbeth is acting and they realize that he will soon die. The theme of Macbeth is uncontrolled ambition can lead to destruction of the mind.

Lady Macbeth performs to lure attention away from Macbeth. Her actions divulge her hideous treachery in persuading Macbeth to commit a sickening crime. In Scene 3, she takes centre stage twice and acts upon it to prove innocent and attempts to cover up for Macbeth. She faints. Except, it’s all to cover up the condescendence.

The strive an ambition for power can seem to be true perfection, but one should be careful what they wish for, because that power might be exactly what causes their downfall. Lady Macbeth is the wife of the play’s tragic hero. She is more ruthless and more ambitious than her husband. Lady Macbeth constantly taunts her husband for his lack of courage, even though we know of his bloody deeds on the battlefield. When it comes to murdering the King, Lady Macbeth is driven to madness later in the play.

Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, tells the story of a seemingly noble warrior, corrupted by his wife, that kills the king in order to feed his inner greed for power. Throughout the story, unbridled ambition is seen causing rapacity, paranoia, and insanity, as observed in Lady Macbeth’s actions, which include asking spirits to help her kill the king, making a façade for herself, both of which lead to her going insane and committing suicide. To start, Lady Macbeth’s rapacity is shown in full disclosure when she begs spirits to “fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty”(Macbeth I.v.32-33). This is an indication of her fervent will to attain power through any means necessary, even if it means having to get her hands bloody.

People that have ambition are often the ones that experience the downfalls that come with these endeavors. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the author portrays a variety of conflicts that characters come across as a result of their aspirations. To begin, Macbeth depicts dangers that come with ambition. Evidently, his aspiration to become King leads him to his downfall.

Shakespeare's Scottish tragedy, Macbeth, narrates the pitiful story of a once loyal man who later became determined upon taking the bloody path towards power, including the murder of his honourable King, Duncan. The Macbeth's evil doings lead to their own demise. The play was written only a year after the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Shakespeare wrote this play in order to warn other potential regicides of the awful fate that will inevitably await them if they too were foolish enough to commit such an atrocious act. The play integrates many themes from the supernatural to death and deceit, with the most significant being excessive ambition, which was without a doubt a major factor in the occurrence of regicide.

Shakespeare’s characterization of Macbeth and his consequences reveals his warning about ambitions and its downfalls. Macbeth begins as a noble man who’s ambition ruins him and his true self, leading to his inevitable death. In Act I, Shakespeare presents Macbeth as an accomplished man whose lust for more is fueled by his wife’s ambitions. At this point in the play, Lady Macbeth commonly challenges his masculinity to drive his ambition to kill King Duncan and acclaim the throne of Scotland: “Art thou afeard to be the same in thine own act and valour as thou art desire?” (P. 29). Conversely, by Act III, Macbeth’s ambition is self-driven because of the prophecy making him loses his sense of morality, and become corrupt. One such action is the murder of Banquo, Macbeth’s “noble partner” (P. 17): “Who wear our health but sickly in his life, which his death were prefect” (P. 56). Banquo’s murder serves as the beginning of Macbeth’s crumbling edifice, as for each murder he commits, he falls deeper into the world of deception.

Initially more enterprising than her husband, Lady Macbeth ends up by falling into a psychic decline (Bloom 521-522). In The Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom affirms that the madness of the Queen surpasses a ”trauma merely of guilt.” (529) Once the act of usurping the crown has succeeded, her husband turns from her and “the mutual greatness they had promised each other” (529) reduces.

Ambition in Macbeth is largely presented to be an evil trait, with it leading to the committing of foul acts in relation to morality. Shakespeare presents this in an attempt to challenge the individualistic thinking promoted by the Jacobean belief of Renaissance Humanism, in which one should take fate into their own hands. The play indicates how anyone can have the trait of ambition, going against gender stereotypes as is evident with Lady Macbeth’s desires to reach the position of a monarch, regardless of the immoral methods by which this is done. Her metaphorical explanation desiring to be ‘filled from the crown to the toe topful of direst cruelty,’