Shakespeare's Macbeth: Ambition And Greed

In The Tragedy of Macbeth written by William Shakespeare, the concept of free will is a focal point influenced through persuasion, murder, and the unraveling of the mind. Macbeth is comparable to every man and woman because he is pulled back and forth between the forces of good and evil. His desire to obtain the title of king is much greater than his ambition to remain a heroic, valorous soldier. Chaos ensues, due to Macbeth’s taking advantage of his free will, and his remaining attributes diminish as a result. The universe intertwines with the actions of people, sending ripples through space and time. Connectivity is a substantial theme that is imperative to understand while examining The Tragedy of Macbeth. Good eventually comes from evil

In the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, the main character Macbeth, in many cases, is portrayed as being evil. However, his character is not truly the evil force driving the actions of the play. His wife, Lady Macbeth, as well as the witches and their misleading prophecies, are the real driving forces of Macbeth’s unspeakable actions. Macbeth is driven mad by the evil around him, causing him to turn to the violent behavior displayed throughout the many murders of the play. On his own, Macbeth had no intent of harming others for his own gain, or anyone else’s. With the influence of evil around him, his personality shifted to the murderous Macbeth we see as the play goes on.

Macbeth is no longer an honest, innocent husband, as he was in the beginning. Macbeth has completed his transition from an honest and caring leader, into a cold, heartless individual, which is shown when he voices: “She should have died hereafter / There would have been a time for such a word.” (V.v.17-18) Macbeth is informed about his wife’s suicide, and shows absolutely no remorse, which shows how heartless he has become. Macbeth’s love for his wife deteriorated, alongside their relationship to the point where Macbeth does not even care about his wife’s death. Moving forward, Macbeth is not the only person who has undergone a major change. Lady Macbeth has also transitioned from a ruthless, power hungry individual, to someone riddled with guilt, which is shown when she states: “The thane of Fife has a wife. Where is she now?— / What, will these hands ne’er be clean?” (V.i.30-31) Lady Macbeth is referring to the horrible crimes which she has pushed her husband into committing. Lady Macbeth comes to realize her husband is not the loving person he was in the beginning. Moreover, she also realizes he has become cold and heartless, to the point where he cannot be stopped. Macbeth’s transition to dominance has now been completed, as he has become insensitive to human

Macbeth is the Shakespearean play that features the triumphant uprise and the inevitable downfall of its main character. In this play, Macbeth’s downfall can be considered to be the loss of his moral integrity and this is achieved by ambition, despite this, Lady Macbeth and the witches work through his ambition, furthering to assist his inevitable ruin. Ambition alone is the most significant factor that led to Macbeth’s downfall. The witches are only able to influence his actions through Macbeth’s pre-existing and the three witches see that Macbeth has ambition and uses it to control his action.

Throughout the Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, the character of Macbeth possesses an essential characteristic of madness and irrationality that embodies the theme and important elements of the literary work. In the play, Macbeth’s character is perceived as so ambitious and desperate to achieve the greatest benefits for himself that his hysteria is manifested in the setting of the play, Scotland, in the characters that surround him such as his wife, Lady Macbeth, and his rival Macduff.

Shakespeare engineered a most impressionable character in Macbeth who easily succumbs to the extensive magnitude of opposing constraints. This character is Macbeth, who is the protagonist in the play and husband to a conniving wife, who in the end is the sole cause for Macbeth 's undoing. Conflicting forces in the play compel internal conflicts within Macbeth to thrive on his contentment and sanity as he his torn asunder between devotion, aspiration, morality and his very own being. He has developed a great sense of loyalty from being a brave soldier; however, his ambition soon challenges this allegiance. As his sincerity begins to deteriorate, his own sanity starts to disintegrate until the point where he cannot differentiate between reality

Consequently, Macbeth is responsible for devastating himself due to his insane mental state. His mental ability deranged completely turns him from an honourable hero into an immoral tyrant. In the beginning of the play, Macbeth is sane and praised by every person in Scotland. In contrast, he turns into an unscrupulous dictator because of mental instability at the end. Macbeth throws his honour and sanity away instead of being a respected dominator. As his mental ability deteriorates, he becomes more violent and more unprincipled due to ambition throughout the play. The honourable Macbeth is destroyed by his own mental deterioration and his infinite ambition. Moreover, Macbeth becomes a ruthless tyrant and loses people’s admiration since his

The last act of the play shows the final consequences of Macbeth’s actions. Macbeth does not care if the world has to suffer for him to thrive. The witches in the play are able to manipulate Macbeth’s greed to make him spiral out in a self destructing fury. Throughout the play Macbeth loses his mortality in order to gain power outside his realm of possibility. Macbeth becomes a blood thirsty monster because he forgets how to be a human. Macbeth’s mind has become so “familiar with slaughterous thoughts” that he “forgot the taste of fears” (5.5.9,14). Macbeth’s greed made his mind so dark that he can no longer fear the real world. This shows that Macbeth’s paranoia and hallucinations are so awful, that the real world does not seem threatening. Even with enemies wanting to kill him, Macbeth becomes more frightened by his own mind. When Macbeth’s wife dies, he does not even feel remorse because he can no longer feel human emotions. When told the news of his wife’s death, Macbeth’s only response is that it was bound to happen eventually. Macbeth’s final outlook on the life he did so much to get, is that “Life’s but a walking shadow / … signifying nothing” (5.5.24,28). Macbeth cannot live with the fact that he did horrible deeds to achieve power, and in the end it was not even worth it. Macbeth feels like his life has no meaning, and he wasted his time on Earth with greedy, selfish desires. This idea is supported by the belief that “Macbeth finds not the release and fulfillment he had hoped for, but spiritual desolation” (Halio 251). Macbeth thought once he had enough power, everything would be perfect. However, Macbeth was never able to settle and kept wanting more, which left him unfulfilled and dissatisfied. Since Macbeth was never able to find this release, the stress and guilt of his past actions destroyed him. Macbeth’s schizophrenia darkened his thoughts

The tragedy of Macbeth is a story of a man reaping the consequences of selfishness, pride, lust, and, ultimately, greed. Macbeth is greatly honoured in the eyes of King Duncan. He allows the opinions of others and the evil prophecies of sorcery to dictate his attitude and actions. Macbeth commits a series of gruesome deeds, convinced that he will have complete happiness as king. He gets everything he desires, yet is still overwhelmed by the power of paranoia and guilt from his actions. His greed brings temporal joy, but later causes social and mental insanity. Although the fictional tragedy portrays a practical lesson for one’s character, it also has a spiritual application.

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.

The play Macbeth authored by William Shakespeare emphasizes a theme of guilt and regret in relation to unnatural acts, through the character change of Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, their relationship and how it can cause emotional breakdown loss of personality and ultimately, loss of sanity. The play was written in the early the 1600s and is set in Scotland. It focuses around the life of Macbeth a Thane, and future king of Scotland, who seemingly does whatever it takes to achieve this prestigious role. In the beginning of the play Lady Macbeth is steely in her mannerisms and appears to be willing to do anything in order to achieve what she ultimately desires. However, in the final act of the play her steely and cruel nature breaks down due to the

Macbeth started off as a valiant and courageous soldier, who would do anything for the king. By the end of the play, Macbeth was a tyrant and a horrible leader who killed those who trusted him to maintain the throne. It takes many factors to take a strong man and transform him into an evil monster. Macbeth’s downfall was caused by the deception and temptation of the witches and their prophecies, Lady Macbeth’s greed and aspirations for her husband to be king, and Macbeth’s own greed, jealousy and ambition.

Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, is a dark play full of witchcraft and foreshadowing. Lady Macbeth showed scheming qualities throughout the play which had a lot of influence on her husband, Macbeth. Because of her controlling personality, Macbeth was scared to disappoint her. She was the one who positioned the idea of Duncan’s murder into her husband’s mind where he was succumbed by her supremacies and made the ultimate mistake. It was also her idea to place the blame of Duncan’s death on the soldiers. The most prominent example, in my opinion, was that she said she could not get the blood off of her hands. In my opinion Lady Macbeth is more responsible for King Duncan’s murder, and Macbeth’s treason, than Macbeth himself.

In his work, The Poetics Aristotle reflects on the role of pity and fear in tragedy, stating, “Tragedy is essentially an imitation not of persons but of action and of life; of happiness and misery. Add human happiness or misery takes the form of action… Character gives us qualities, but it is in our actions that we are happy or the reverse… The tragic pleasure is that of pity and fear” (Aristotle, The Poetics). Aristotle is probing one to conclude that tragedy is characterized by the pity and fear one evokes when individuals go against their presumed character and commit detrimental acts. Throughout his play Macbeth, Shakespeare, reminisces on the actions that gravitate an audience to render both fear and pity, which characterize a tragedy.

Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a dramatic play in which many people are murdered and tensions run high. The duo of Lady Macbeth and Macbeth pounces onto every opportunity to become the hierarchy. They have two quite different personalities, but over the duration of the play, the personalities switch over. In the beginning, Lady Macbeth is manipulative and Macbeth is scared and guilty. The tables turn over the bumpy road of crime, breakdowns and fights. Lady Macbeth is the puppet master behind Macbeth, pulling the strings and controlling him until he becomes evil, just like her. The powers of Lady Macbeth and Macbeth shift over the play because of their guilt and amount of control over themselves.