Oyinoluwa Omoloja Mr. Lewis
English 10 - Period 4B 20 April 2023 A Slowing, Dying Macbeth
‘‘O full of Scorpions is my mind!’’(Shakespeare 3.2 37). One famous example of a slow mental deterioration occurs in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which tells the story of a hero falling from grace. Macbeth's mental deterioration starts as he becomes hungry for power, which leads him to face immense guilt and subsequently fall victim to his own ambition. Macbeth is first introduced as Thane of Glamis, who goes to war leading the Scottish troops to victory over invading forces. On his arrival after successfully winning the battle, he meets the witches who hail him by his first title Thane of Glamis, then Thane of Cawdor, and King. This last title confused him; he wondered how he would be king if King Duncan is alive. He then sends a letter to Lady Macbeth about this revelation in which she is sold in by the thought of being queen, leading her and Macbeth to plot and execute the killing of King Duncan.
What starts Macbeth's mental deterioration is his greed for power, which is first sparked by three witches. Without their prophecy, Macbeth would never have sought to kill Duncan. These witches aroused greed in Macbeth. Macbeth was an honorable man who won favor from King Duncan for his courage in
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After the death of Banquo, Macbeth begins to suffer unimaginable mental consequences as he visualizes his friend’s ghost visiting him sitting on the king's chair. “If I stand here, I saw him.” (Shakespeare 3.4 78). This is important because this also marks Macbeth’s decline of rule and power due to the lords not believing he is not fit to rule Scotland. His hallucinations cause him to be disconnected from society as he is not seeing the reality that someone with a clear head would see. Subsequently, it is shown that he has two worlds he lives in; his personal fiction and real time which he refuses to