Everyone, at one point in their lives has wanted power more than anything. Those who do get it have to make the decision whether they want to use it for good or evil. Power can turn a person into something they never dreamed they would become because it starts to take over their lives and people do not know what to do with so much power. There are many examples of power in the play Macbeth and every person that got it used it in very different ways. This caused many changes in people from turning from good to evil or evil to good. Over the course of the play, power causes Macbeth to turn from honorable to cruel which leads to his downfall.
In William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, Macbeth begins as a man of integrity and is a noble man. Infact he was one of the king’s favorite fighters and subjects. But over time Macbeth becomes corrupt once the power and the crown are his. Macbeth first becomes power thirsty when he and Banquo were given a prophecy by the three weird sisters. The theme ambition shows up frequently in the character Macbeth, especially when it has some relation to murder and the throne, to get the throne to begin with, some examples are when he killed King Duncan, Macduff’s family and Banquo, to keep the throne.
It is human nature to want power, to be at the top of the pyramid, to be king/queen, but that comes at a price as shown in Macbeth. In the play, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth will do anything to have absolute power and nothing stands in their way. From killing to going completely mad, they will become the next king and queen at all costs. The ambition and the want for power is so high that they kill many, they do whatever they can to be one step closer, and they go completely insane, all because they want that absolute power.
Is it not weird how ambition for power corrupts one corrupt and leads them to their destiny? Ambition for power is lust which tempts one to be corruptive to acquire and protect it. However, in William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, it is evident that ambition for power ultimately leads to corruption when Macbeth’s ambition for power causes the assassination of King Duncan, when Macbeth’s ambition for power compels him to execute those who obstruct his inheritance to the Scottish Throne, and finally, when Lady Macbeth persuades Macbeth to assassinate the people who impede his Kingship of Scotland out of lust for power.
Motivation to attain goals plays an important role in an individual’s life. It is instinctive to put effort for the accomplishment of one’s target. If an individual put genuine effort and enough motivation to fulfill one's objectives, it will result in success. Nonetheless, the urge to fulfill one's goal keeps individual to focus on its mission until it has been achieved. In William Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth, the character of Macbeth uses motivation in order to achieve his ambition of becoming the King of Scotland. Shakespeare also conveyed the idea that, individuals use motivation to achieve their goals, but it can also lead one to destruction and keep him away from accomplishing his goal. However, with the use of false motivation by
William Shakespeare, playwright of Macbeth, shows the importance that power and corruption can hold on a person’s humanity. In order to prove the true effect of personal gains, he uses the main character, Macbeth, to show how evil people are willing to become. Personal power has the ability to be essential to greatness, but at the same time is able to destroy a person’s true nature. Believe it or not, Macbeth once was a man of honor. At the beginning of the play, Macbeth was loyal to King Duncan, a strong military leader, and a respected husband. Throughout the tragedy, Macbeth 's character takes a big, yet gradual change for the worst as ambition starts to completely take over him. Once the three witches give Macbeth his prophecies he transitions from a brave, loyal man to a cold blooded murderer. His power hungry personality leads to a character change from who he was before he knew about the witches prophecies, after he learned of them, and right before he was murdered. In Macbeth, Shakespeare dramatises the damaging physical and mental effects of ambition on those who seek power for their own sake.
Early on in the story it is revealed that Macbeth wants to become the king after listening from the prophecy told by the three wyrd witches. One example is when Macbeth says” Two predictions have come true. The First towards the ultimate goal, the throne!” (1.3.130-135). That proves that Macbeth has a lot of ambition to become the new king and to over throne Duncan. Another quote from Macbeth that shows his sole desire to become king is when he says “If fate says I’ll be king well fate may crown me, without my help” (1.3. 140-145). This kind of line indicates that he is trying to become the new king if something where to happen to King
In the play Macbeth by Shakespeare, the main character Macbeth believes he will be king. The power he thinks he will have causes him to kill the people who stand in his way
Have you heard of fate? Do you believe in fate? Well in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, fate plays an important role in Macbeth’s life. Fate is something that unavoidably befalls a person. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth the witches informs Macbeth of his fate that he will become the king in the future. Macbeth believes the witches words and Lady Macbeth persuade him to become the king and murder all the people that get in the way. Shakespeare shows us that fate is complicated by our actions, Macbeth will do anything to meet his fate that in the end lead him to his death because of his greediness.
Hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!...that shalt be king hereafter (Act 1, Scene 3).” The play Macbeth starts off with the three witches telling Macbeth and Banquo that Macbeth will become the Thane of Cawdor and then he will become king. Soon after, Macbeth learns that King Duncan has named him as the Thane of Cawdor. With this, Macbeth begins to believe that the witches’ prophecies must be true and is determined to become king. He says, “Let not light see my black and deep desires (Act 1, Scene 4),” implying that he has the inner desire to now become king. As proved by Macbeth’s success to become the Thane of Cawdor, the prophecies are Macbeth’s fate; they will be the outcomes of his life, but how they will come to be is dependent on Macbeth’s own choices. When Macbeth shares the prophesies with his wife, Lady Macbeth, she helps him murder King Duncan in order to gain the throne. The witches had predicted that Macbeth would be king but they hadn’t said when or how. It is Macbeth’s own choice to murder Duncan because of his deep desire to become king. Macbeth wants to protect his power and eliminate all enemies that may come in the way. He first orders for Banquo and his son, Fleance, to be killed because the witches had also predicted that Banquo’s son will become king. Macbeth says in regards to Banquo, “There is none but he whose being I do fear...Given to the common enemy of man, to make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings (Act 3, Scene 1)!” Banquo is
may go to greater extremes than others to obtain this power. For instance, in the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Macbeth was characterized as a good man, well renowned for winning a battle. His wife, on the contrary, Lady Macbeth, has a strong urge to obtain power and she is willing to do anything to acquire it. She implemented the thought of destroying everyone who stood in the way along the path to reach royalty in Macbeth’s mind by making him feel like he as though he is less of a man if he decided not to. Since she is a woman, reach royalty on her own, so she uses her husband, a man who she vowed to love, as a catalyst to get the power she craved. The excessive desire for power can cause one to do things a normal person wouldn’t do.
Macbeth’s greatest weakness is his ambition, but it is also his greatest strength. Despite his ambition being one of his major weaknesses, it is not his sole weakness he exhibits that contributes to his inevitable death. At the beginning of William Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ the protagonist Macbeth is described as ‘brave’, ‘noble’ and ‘honourable’, however Lady Macbeth’s and Macbeths desire for power consumes them. Macbeth’s ambition overrides his conscience and transformed his greatest strength into his greatest weakness. Macbeth’s inability to resist temptations that led him to be greedy for power, Macbeth’s easily manipulative nature which allowed his mind to be swayed, Macbeth having no self control and his excessive pride was what allowed him to renew his previously honourable and celebrated title into one of an evil ‘tyrant’.
What drives apparently good men to become ruthless, ambitious, jealous and greedy? We see an example of this in the play “Macbeth” performed at Pop Up Globe, directed by Tom Mallaburn, was written originally by the well-known author, William Shakespeare. Macbeth is based upon a big tragedy, where the two main characters, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, inevitably were forced to do evil things due to their ambition; taste the sweetness of victory and then downfall again. Although the play was written by an English author, Shakespeare smartly sets his story based upon the idea of ambition, a concept that relates to all of us, no matter where we are from.
He now perceives that in order to become king he has to step over some people, kill them. For all intents and purposes, how can he become king if Duncan is already running the position? Executing Duncan was the only option in order for him to become king, at least to his regards. Despite his bad ambition, Macbeth is not happy about committing murder, not to the slightest. It's like if he'd close his eyes and reopened them (hoping to see things differently) he'd still want to kill Duncan for his position and he absolutely hates that. On the other hand his wife, Lady Macbeth, she has been plotting a way to dethrone, if not, kill Duncan since the beginning of the play. This one was evil from the start. Instead of pushing his husband away from developing a corrupted mind like her own, Lady Macbeth instead guides him to killing Duncan. A key thing to remember is, Lady Macbeth only provided a small role to his husband's corruption psychologically, but overall what truly initiated his unethical mind was the witches prophecy. The witches prophecy asserted Macbeth that he will be king, thus no one can get in his way, and if anyone dared to defy that they'd get eliminated by him. Becoming king is Macbeth's goal, even if it means doing monstrous things to achieve it, he will do it. Similarly to The Crucible's main antagonist Abigail Williams . The author describes her as a “strikingly beautiful girl with an endless capacity for dissembling” (Miller, Act 1, Scene 1,) meaning that that she’s a damn good liar. In the beginning of the play, Miller reveals that she’s an orphan and she used to be a maid for John Proctor's Household. Abigail’s had an affair with Proctor, which cost her job, and with jealousy and desperation she cast a spell on Proctor's wife to die so she can have him all to herself. Nevertheless, one can get executed for practicing witchcraft in these eras. As the play proceeds Abigail's terrible qualities start to unfold, the
In the literary works that we studied this year: The Book Thief, Purple Hibiscus, Macbeth, Sonnet 101,Sonnet 154 , Kevin Pietersen The Autobiography and Dead Poets Society- all the works have the same central theme :”Words have had the power to transform, for better or worse”. The character’s lives have all been affected and transformed by the power of words that has a great effect on their development rather than other external factors that the characters face in their daily lives. This will be shown by analysing how words lead these characters to achieve success and as well as to their demise.