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Examples Of Mental Illness In Macbeth

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Olivia Zerno Mr. Belluscio ELA IV 3 April 2024 The Effect of Mental Disorders in Macbeth William Shakespeare was a very talented artist and has made very historical writings. In one of his most famous plays, “Macbeth”, the main character becomes consumed by ambition. This ambition came from three witches who told him he would become king in the near future. Influenced by his wife, he resorts to murdering the current king to fulfill the witches' prophecies. As the play goes on, you can tell Macbeth’s ambition overpowers him and it gets out of control. Macbeth’s wife, Lady Macbeth, is a significant character in this play and this paper. As the play progresses, readers can see that her personality changes drastically. Lady Macbeth is the one character who is significantly …show more content…

For example, Catherine E. Thomas mentions it in an article, “On the darker side, throughout the 1800s, Lady Macbeth is compared with witches, demons, viragos, snake-women, and iconic "evil women" like Medea.” “(Un)sexing Lady Macbeth: gender, power, and visual rhetoric in her graphic afterlife.” (Un)sexing Lady Macbeth. In this article, Lady Macbeth is portrayed as a dark and eerie person. Starting from the beginning of the play she has a very interesting monologue, “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full of direst cruelty.” (Shakespeare 1.5.39-42). This quote is much longer, but this is showing that she was not mentally okay from the beginning of this play. Catherine E. Thomas backs this up in the same article saying, “She is powerful, clearly, but that power is dangerous and otherworldly. She is even more threatening because she is able to mask her true nature from the court until the end of the play when she drifts into madness.” With this unusual behavior, others view her as a threat already from the start of the

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Macbeth And His Schizophrenia Picture this: a world full of witches, prophecies, and bloodshed. Welcome to William Shakespeare's famous tragedy, Macbeth. Some may argue that Macbeth's erratic behavior and hallucinations throughout the play are signs of schizophrenia. However, a closer examination reveals that Macbeth's actions and psychological state are better understood within the framework of guilt, ambition, and moral deterioration. This essay will argue that Macbeth has schizophrenia and show how his character represents the tragic consequences of a flawed individual driven by his ambitions and inner demons.

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In the play, Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, Macbeth wanted to gain power and leadership over the country of Scotland and become king. He wanted these authorities so desperately, Macbeth would do whatever it took to get it, even going as far as murdering not just one but multiple people. He wanted nothing more other than to be king as well as his wife. Throughout the play, Macbeth showed different varieties of many mental disorders but mainly Paranoia and Schizophrenia. Paranoia is described as ¨a delusional belief that one is being harassed, or betrayed by others¨, while Schizophrenia is described as ¨a serious long-term mental illness that affects how a person thinks, feels, and

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Post traumatic stress disorder more commonly known as PTSD. According to the http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/PTSD-overview/basics/what-is-ptsd.asp PTSD is a disorder that tends to occur when someone doesn’t recover from a traumatic event such as war, rape, abuse. Along with the disorder a series of symptoms come such as agitation, irritability, hostility, hypervigilance, self-destructive behavior, or social isolation, as well as other symptoms. Throughout the play we see a string of characters that present with possibility of having PTSD no more than our main character Macbeth. Macbeth weakened through war and an abusive wife caused him to suffer from PTSD.

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Macbeth exemplifies symptoms of schizophrenia throughout the play. A few symptoms of schizophrenia include delusions, hallucinations, hostility, and disorganized thoughts. Macbeth clearly portrays schizophrenia symptoms throughout the play. Treatments for Macbeth could have included antipsychotics or psychosocial therapies. In brief, Macbeth displays the symptoms of schizophrenia.

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Lady Macbeth suffered from a Post-Traumatic stress disorder and paranoid schizophrenia due to these symptoms: hallucinations, intrusive memories, as well as delusions. Post–traumatic stress disorder (PSTD) is a mental health condition that is triggered by a frightening event that someone has witnessed or experienced. Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder is insomnia, guilt, reliving traumatic moments, and concentration problems. (Lipinski) Lady Macbeth is reliving a tragedy moment that

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In 1912, American psychiatrist and neurologist Isador H. Coriat wrote “The hysteria of Lady Macbeth”. He was one of the first American psychoanalysts and this book was also one of his first works. He analysed Lady Macbeth’s character using the modern psychopathology’s point of view and he determined that the woman is “an accurate example of hysteria” (2). The sleep-walking scene, under his perspective, has nothing to do with remorse. Lady Macbeth’s apparent bravery is in reality, but she is an unconscious cowardice.

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Shakespeare, like any other man in the 16th and 17th century, saw ambitious and dominant women as evil and even disturbing or disturbed. From Macbeth, we can see Shakespeare feels women should be challenged and punished because they are trying to change society. Nowadays these ambitious and dominant women are regarded as brave and respected because of their ambition, such as Lady Macbeth’s ambition to become Queen. Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth as mentally disturbed.

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Macbeth, written by William Shakespeare, is a play that mainly focuses on one common theme of insanity. Macbeth gradually becomes plagued by intense guilt as his desire for power drives him to attain his goals by any means necessary, including committing murder. He kills Duncan in cold blood in order to become King, has Banquo killed by three murderers because he wishes to maintain his position as King, and finally, he has Macduff’s family slaughtered. Each of these occurrences takes place because of Macbeth’s will to be King, or they are a result of his guilt. Nonetheless, they are all completed of his free will, which is what causes him to deteriorate mentally.

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There are many people in the world that experience mental problems and therefore affecting their personality. Not everyone though is as bad as Macbeth when it comes to mental deterioration. Macbeth is a very self-centered man and it leads him to change the person he once was. Although it is not seen much in the beginning of Shakespeare's play “The Tragedy of Macbeth”, Macbeth’s mental state deteriorates as the play progresses, which can be seen when he is guilty of murdering King Duncan, being taunted by the ghost of Banquo, and his speech to the witches.

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William Shakespeare portrayed the character Lady Macbeth to be extremely ruthless, malicious and manipulative. Thus, being the reason she could easily convince Macbeth to do her will, yet still put on such a convincing performance in front of those who knew nothing of her and her husband’s actions. Lady Macbeth shows her complexity constantly throughout the story when she shares her view-point on masculinity by demasculinizing her own husband, when she strategically plans the murder of the King Duncan, and finally when she finally goes crazy because of the guilt she possesses for not only her own actions but also turning her own husband into a

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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

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On many occasions she rules her husband and dictates his actions. Although near the end of the play Lady Macbeth’s personality and strength begins to deteriorate. Later committing suicide after having many detailed memories and thoughts from the murder. Shakespeare not only shows how guilt can change a person’s personality but he also portrays untraditional gender roles.

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