Desire For Power In Macbeth

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As humans, the desire to want control or influence is natural. However, some people 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 was once a man of high prestige. He had just won a battle and been named the Thane of Cawdor. The King, Duncan, congratulated Macbeth for his …show more content…

The trail of tears is also a good depiction of how power corrupts. The trail of tears is when president Andrew Jackson forced a large portion of the Native American population to relocate their homes, so that he could expand his power. Elizabeth Prine Pauls states that “Estimates based on tribal and military records suggest that approximately 100,000 indigenous people were forced from their homes during that period, which is sometimes known as the removal era, and that some 15,000 died during the journey west” Native Americans were known as peaceful people. They didn’t attack unless they were attacked first. This didn’t matter to Andrew Jackson. Though the natives were peaceful people, he still killed off a large portion of their population, as well as entire tribes. Also, an even bigger portion of their population were forced to leave, some leaving behind their family. Andrew Jackson 's need for power turned him into a savage who doesn’t care about the well-being of those he comes