Ambition is an important quality which all people possess to some extent. It is vital to have this quality to gain the will to improve and be successful in everything that must be done through daily life. Although this characteristic has its significance, the consequences of an exceeding amount of it are criticized in William Shakespeare's Macbeth. The play follows a loyal soldier named Macbeth who receives a prophecy that tells him he will be king. With a spark of ambition, he tells his wife, Lady Macbeth, and her drive is ignited. Lady Macbeth’s strong ambition is the cause of Macbeth’s ultimate demise because her ambition contributes to his growing unruly behavior.
Lady Macbeth’s view on fate causes her to set into motion the events that will eventually lead to Macbeth’s downfall. When updated on the prophecy of her husband from the witches, Lady Macbeth’s first instinct is to formulate a plan for King Duncan’s murder so “never/shall sun the morrow [he will] see”(Shakespeare 1.5.71-72). By
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Fearing another prophecy told to his friend Banquo, Macbeth impulsive hires murderers to kill him and his son. Succeeding with only Banquo, Macbeth reaches his peripeteia and imagines seeing Banquo’s ghost. Instead of calming him, Lady Macbeth tries to cover up his embarrassing actions by convincing her guest that it is “a thing of custom” (Shakespeare 3.4.118). Because she selfishly disregards her husband’s desperate cry for help to gain the admiration of her affluent guests, Macbeth is left in ruins and his true self is lost forever. His ambition finally exceeds that of his wife and is regarded as an “untitled tyrant” (Shakespeare 4.3.122). Lady Macbeth no longer attempts to direct Macbeth’s actions for her own gain because he has acquired a fierce ambition for himself modeled after her’s and dies because of
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
After marrying the fanciful ideas of destiny obtained from the witches prophecy, and coupling that with both his and Lady Macbeth’s ambition, he commits regicide early in the play. By killing King Duncan, Macbeth undermines a concrete moral tenet of a vassal, unswerving loyalty to his Lord. This loss of morality slowly progresses to madness, and ultimately leads to Macbeth’s downfall as a tyrannic ‘hellhound’ and immoral oppressor of the people. By showing Macbeth’s degeneration, Shakespeare warns the audience of the consequences of loss of morality, and madness that results. In order to fulfil his ambition, Macbeth disregards his morality, and concomitantly, his sanity. His ambition is also shown in his desire for his family to retain kingship, despite the witches prophesying that Banquo’s heirs would be kings. This ambition for his own children ultimately leads him to order the death of Banquo and Fleance: “Banquo, thy soul’s flight, if it must find heaven, must find it tonight.” This ambition however, blinds him to his degrading morality, and lack of support from Scottish lords. By killing Banquo, Macbeth alienates even more of his vassals, who begin to see the depth to which he has been corrupted by power. Macbeth’s unrestrained ambition superimposes itself over his original moral convictions, and turns him into a loathed dictator leading to rebellion, and
Macbeth is the story of a tragic hero. Once the loyal thane of Cawdor, Macbeth is soon overtaken by his own ambition in his quest to become the King and maintain his power once he is crowned. However, this character change does not appear on its own; much of Macbeth’s harmful ambition is the product of his wife’s urging. The passive ambition that is the center of Lady Macbeth’s personality is the catalyst that transforms Macbeth’s character from a noble subject of the king to an individual capable of committing countless brutal acts to further his power; ultimately leading to the downfall of both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth himself.
As an intrinsic human nature, ambition is an indispensable driving force in society. Ramifications of vaulting ambitions are evaluated with controversial claims in myriad of literatures and academic studies. Ambition prompts one’s desire to achieve a better self; however, overindulgence in ambition would provoke intractable corrosion in one’s morality and logic and eventually precipitate the arrival of irreversible demise.
Ambition is the rise and downfall of every great person in history, without it, people would not have to discipline to achieve. At the start of Macbeth’s story, we see Macbeth’s ambition in his will to fight for the king, “The service and loyalty I owe, In doing it, pays itself” (I.iv.22-23). Once Macbeth encounters the weird sisters it was prophesied that he would become the Thane of Cawdor and more importantly, The King of Scotland. This moment is important because it shows when Macbeth’s ambition starts to become corrupt. Everything Macbeth does after this is for his own gain and nothing more. After the first prophecy comes true, he starts to think of ways to become king, whether it was through coincidence or if he would have to force the
Macbeth is a very complex character with a great thirst for power. He has drastic changes in his personality through the book such as ambition, guilt, and hubris. This makes him an extremely complex character. The theme in Macbeth is ambition which can teach the reader many lessons. One important lesson that is shown in Macbeth is that our actions have consequences and that our actions can have an effect on others. Macbeth’s ambition lead to his downfall because he knew that his actions were not just but proceeded to act on them anyway regardless of how it would affect others.
The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare recounts Macbeth's meteoric rise as a soldier and promising future leader whose megalomaniacal ambition led to his tragic downfall. In addition to Macbeth's ambitions, which initially enable him to be strong leader and soldier, he is influenced heavily by his wife, Lady Macbeth, and the three witches that prophesize his ascent to the throne, as well as warn him of his eventual demise. It can be argued that it is Macbeth's ambition that allows him to succeed in his endeavors, however the goals to which he is working toward influence the results of his hard work. Macbeth's ambitions help him to become a war hero, and as his goals change, his ambitions drive him to become a tyrannical villain.
In the play, Macbeth, written by William Shakespeare, ambition is the key theme throughout the plot. It is the sole reason the events occur as they do. Many refer to Macbeth as the play of ambition due to this very reason. However, as we read through the play we begin to see effects of each character’s desires on themselves as well as those who surround them. We see some characters follow their ambition through violent ways while some achieve it through manipulation. Three characters in particular however, followed their ambitions and eventually ended up sculpting the plot of the story: Macduff, Macbeth, and Lady Macbeth. All three of these characters experienced the consequences caused by their own desires and the impact on those around
Macbeth is introduced to the play as the “valiant Thane of Glamis”, who is loyal and affectionate. His fame on the battlefield is rewarded with great honor from his “beloved King Duncan”. Although the opinions of most suggest that he can do no wrong, his ambition is clear to the audience through his asides and soliloquies. Macbeth is influenced into his crimes by the prophecies of the three witches and by his wife, Lady Macbeth.
The conflict that arises in Macbeth’s psyche during the first act of Shakespeare’s play is similar to that of a drug addict on the verge of overdose. Both are thrown into the crucible of their minds in a desperate conflict between their ambition to achieve a higher state, and the reminder that there are aspects of their current level that are virtuous in nature. Macbeth’s confliction begins when the idea of murdering King Duncan to gain his throne was seeded in his mind by a prophecy foretold by three wicked witches who had been plaguing the area with their evil intentions. At first, Macbeth denied the possibility of any factuality behind the words of the wicked women. However, as the first half of the prophecy came to fruition, Macbeth was left alone with an intense moral debate over the intentions of the women's words, “Cannot be ill, cannot be good: if ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success, Commencing in a truth?” (Shakespeare Act 1: Scene 3).
Shakespeare, the author of Macbeth, portrays what it means to be ambitious through the main character in his play. This play follows an ambitious man named Macbeth. Three witches tell him a prophecy in which one part involves him becoming king of Scotland. They never tell him how he will become king just that he will somehow become one. This causes him to be filled with ambition. His ambition leads him to kill the current king to make himself king and never ceases to deteriorate throughout the majority of the play. This is until the final act when he realizes that all of his ambitions were for nothing. In Macbeth Shakespeare displays Macbeth's fatal flaw of ambition through the choices he made, these choices include killing the king, killing
It is often said that man is ambitious by nature, because ambition is a direction of life. It is the desire to achieve something or to succeed. Take Macbeth for example,he is a typical example which can prove this. At first, he is a kind man, but he wants to get more power and become the king.To achieve this ambition, he kills the old king and deceives everyone with his despicable means. Finally, he becomes an evil and irrational man.When Macbeth wants to get more authority, he loses track of a lot of things including human nature. Everything he does is for his ambition. What's more,there is a strong king that I want to mention is Scar---a character from The Lion King. The same as Macbeth, he kills the old king and be the new king by his own
William Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth, portrays the gradual transition some humans where an abundance of ambition turns into greed, affecting the mind and all following actions. The life story of Macbeth and his reign in the tragedy reflects these tendencies in humans, especially due to outside sources that end up having a great impact on this progression of ambition.
Ambition is one of the themes that is used in the play that are very important to the story. Most of the characters are shown to have ambition towards something at some point or another throughout Macbeth. One of the characters that shows a lot of ambition throughout the play is the main character, Macbeth. At the beginning of the play, Macbeth is shown to have ambition towards becoming king. He does not show as much ambition towards killing Duncan as
Ambition, what is it? Some people might see it as a good thing to have ambition, but in shakespeare that's not true at all. In shakespeare ambition is seen as a bad characteristic that can describe someone as almost crazy or evil in a way. For example in Macbeth Macbeth says “Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, And falls on th'other. . . .” (Act 1,Scene 7, line 27-28). In this scene Macbeth is trying to rationalize his murder of king duncan, so ambition isn't really seen as the best thing. But is power worth its consequences? Ambition gone wrong is used in Macbeth through, Macbeth killing people for power, Lady Macbeth having macbeth do her bidding and kill people also for power, and when Malcolm was driven to take over and become king.