The Downfall of Macbeth Macbeth was a hero to many but turned to evil, fulfilling his drive for ambition and love of power and greed. Macbeth was written in 1606 by William Shakespeare. The play portrays how any human is capable of becoming evil, despite how good they may have seemed. Macbeth was admired, respected and honoured as a brave soldier. However, the witches’ prophecies consumed Macbeth; completely changing and destroying the person he once was. The thought of power drove him insane. He became greedy, selfish and acted without thinking. He became disliked by all of Scotland for the person he had become. Macbeth was a tyrant and he had nothing left to live for. He caused his life to change for the worse and Macbeth knew he was the …show more content…
With Macbeth’s mistakes came consequences. As Macbeth committed more acts of evil he faced a life of misery and regret. He was no longer the brave soldier, he had gone mad and was filled with evil thoughts: “O full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!” (3.2.41) Macbeth was not well and struggled daily; having the many dark thoughts going through his head. Macbeth’s greedy and over ambitious traits took over and influenced every decision he made. Macbeth lost everything in which had meaning to him because of his actions. His greed and want for power convinced him to kill his King, whom he loved and respected. He was unable to forgive himself and lived with constant regret. Macbeth’s insecurity then forced him to kill his best friend, pushing him past his breaking point. To maintain his position as king, he felt as though he had to continue to murder those who did not support him. As the play progresses Macbeth continuously became more insane from all the guilt he was experiencing. His life became miserable; all because of the choices he had made. “Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more. It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing” (5.5.27-31). Macbeth believed he had nothing left to live for. In conclusion, Macbeth’s life was good, however he experienced a reversal of fortune when caught up in ambition and
At the beginning of the play, Macbeth’s character starts off as a loyal and brave soldier, who is admired by many people. Throughout the play, however, it is evident that his character and the personality of his character change a lot. There are many aspects that changed his character. What the witches said to him I think changed him the most. Before the witches spoke to him, he didn’t think of what it would be like to be king, or any of the other things, but because the first prediction came true, it led him to believe all the others would as well. The witches are what started him off thinking of how powerful he could become. Obviously his wife talked him into it, but without what the
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a tragedy in which the main characters are obsessed by the desire for power. Macbeth’s aspiration for power blinds him to the ethical implications of his dreadful acts. The more that Shakespeare’s Macbeth represses his murderous feelings, the more he is haunted by them. By analyzing his hallucinations it is possible to trace his deteriorating mental state and the trajectory of his ultimate fall. Throughout the play Macbeth is never satisfied with himself. He feels the need to keep committing crime in order to keep what he wants most: his kingship. The harder Macbeth tries to change his fate the more he tends to run into his fate. His ambition and struggle for power was Macbeth’s tragic flaw in the play.
Macbeth’s unfettered lust for power led to his biggest detriment, the transformation into a man living in fear who cannot possibly escape this continuous cycle of trepidation. Though Macbeth may hide these fears behind a strong exterior throughout the play, it remains a primary emotion and potent motivating force in his life.
A character’s tragic downfall is often influenced by other characters, but this is not the case in Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth. Macbeth conforms to the conditions of a tragic hero because in the beginning of the play, Macbeth is an honourable and trustworthy nobleman to King Duncan and all of Scotland. However, throughout the play, Macbeth commits evil deeds such betrayal, treason, and murder solely because of his ambitions to remain in power. Macbeth murders others upon hearing the witches’ prophecies and even proceeds to return to them to remain in power. Macbeth is influenced and manipulated by his wife Lady Macbeth and The Witches, but he is ultimately responsible for his own tragic downfall. Macbeth’s tragic downfall is caused by his ‘vaulting ambition’ to become king. Thus, Macbeth has no one but his ruthless, cruel, and greedy self to blame for his own tragic downfall.
This hopelessness that Macbeth is feeling shows the final result of his desire for power. He had worked to try to gain this power, and to find his instant gratification. All his hard work lead up to this point, where he has become an almost a different character than before. Macbeth’s desire for power lead him to his ultimate destruction. Through Macbeth’s need for instant gratification, one can see that the quest for power has destroyed his character, just as it would any man’s.
Macbeth has done the worst of the worst, and no one will forgive him for all that he has committed. Macbeth realizes that he cannot win this battle unless he continues on this path of killing those who get in his way. A killer sense has been born unto Macbeth, and he no longer needs Lady Macbeth to criticize him into carrying out murderous deeds. Macbeth cannot handle the guilt that taking human lives has on him, but he continues this terrible cycle of killing. Macbeth is left to his own treacherous mind that will eventually be the reason for his fall as King, and the reason for the death of his own
Macbeth is not an evil man; he is a good man who let his ambitions get the best of him. He made a terrible mistake that any one of us could make. Sometimes there can be one mistake that sends you to your slow demise. In the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare Macbeth makes one decision that ends up leading him to his horrible fate. There were many contributions that lead Macbeth to behave the way he did, but there are reasons it was not entirely his fault or his intentions at first.
In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth the reader watches as Macbeth changes gradually as the play endures. He are transforms from a loyal person with a loving and loyal disposition with other people, into a tyrants who are willing to kill in order to keep himself on the throne. He is tormented with fear, regret, and guilt. When someone does something they know is wrong it causes them to fall prey to their own emotions.
Many of people have heard the tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare. The story revolves on a sequence of misfortunate events that take place when Macbeth makes immoral decisions to be king. In the play, Shakespeare shows how power can cause corruption in a human’s brain. Macbeth himself was not a very confident person, though he had a kind soul to begin with, he was easily influenced and gullible. Through the prophecies of the evil beings, an insignificant seed was planted in Macbeth. That spark of wealth and fortune caused the tyrant within him to awake. Which eventually lead to his fatal death. His ambition lead him to murder, go insane and become very superstitious.
His very own death was the only force great enough to stop the constant negative change that occurred in his life. At the beginning of the play Macbeth was an honorable soldier, and he fought for pride and his country. On the battlefield Macbeth was a great fighter and was loyal to his king. Later in the play Macbeth lost his loyalty for the King. Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth, planned and executed the murder of the King they were once loyal to.
Lady Macbeth becomes incensed at her husband “Naught’s had, all’s spent,/ Where our desire is got without content./ ‘Tis safer to be that which we destroy/ Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy” (III.ii.4-7) that all will turn to nothing if Macbeth starts to feel guilty about killing. She tries to teach him how to become unemotional and fearless. All of these commands and actions cause Macbeth to have a war inside of him, leading him to his downfall.
MacBeth starts imagining things and little by little he starts being crazy. He starts talking to himself in which in one of the times he talks to himself he says “False face must hide what the false heart doth know.” (Act I, Scene 7) From here on now we knew that he would do something wrong. In which someday this will make him do things that he will repent of. One of his biggest mistakes was killing his best friend because of jealousy towards his kid.
In William Shakespeare's Macbeth, the main character, Macbeth, is a brave and loyal subject to the King of Scotland, but as the play progresses, his character begins to change drastically. Evil and unnatural powers, as well as his own passion to become king, take over his better half and eventually lead to his downfall. The three main factors that intertwine with one another that contribute to Macbeth's tragic end are the prophecies told by the three witches, Lady Macbeth's influence, and finally, Macbeth's excessive passion and ambition which drove his desire to become king to the utmost extreme. The prophecy told by the three witches was what triggers the other factors that contribute to Macbeth s downfall. In the first act, the witches
In Macbeth, Shakespeare explores the theme of moral decay produced by the temptation of power. When Macbeth hears the witches’ prophecy (1.3.45) he does not understand how he can become King of Scotland; the only way to attain the crown would be through committing the grave and unjustifiable sin of regicide. Despite this, Macbeth ignores his conscience (1.7.80) and when presented with the opportunity, aided by Lady Macbeth, he murders Duncan (2.1.62). Although he immediately regrets his actions and is filled with compunction (2.2.55, 2.2.63-65), Macbeth decides that there is no going back and “things bad begun make themselves strong by ill.” (3.2.55) Macbeth’s allows his inherent lust for power to completely outweigh his moral conscience.
Throughout reading the play, Macbeth changes a lot from being a man of loyalty and honesty, to a man of whom is power hungry and greedy. This shows how the more power you receive the more power you want; which in many cases, such as this one leads to destruction. Many of the choices that Macbeth made were influenced by the power that he had, and this power began to take over him. This then lead to greed and destruction of not only others, but himself as well.