Examples Of Staying True Macbeth

Staying True When does one truly know his or her self? Many would argue that they would never be cruel or take a life of another human being, but they will not know for sure until faced with such a dilemma. In the play Macbeth, by Shakespeare the main character is a soldier who would fight to the death for his country and his king. Macbeth could not have foreseen that he would commit such crimes as treason and murder. Unfortunately, when Macbeth is face to face with terrible truth, he becomes overcome with the darkness and loses his true self. When the world turns to evil, values are reversed and in order to stay true to oneself he or she must trust intuition. Any good person can be turned to darkness. When Macbeth is given a prophecy that he “shalt be king hereafter”(1.3.49), he begins to imagine cruel and evil ways of gaining this title. Although Macbeth is having these thoughts, his conscience is saying no. His wife, Lady Macbeth, will not let him back down and tells him that he “would be so much more the man”(1.7.51) if he killed the king to gain the title himself. Macbeth feels then that he cannot let his wife down and goes through with the murder. A mistake. He does not stay true to his intuition and cares too much about others thoughts of him, leading to a terrible action and many more to come.

For Macbeth, this happens all at once. The world shifts and “dark night strangles the [sun]”(2.4.7), blocking out the good in the world and turning all to evil. Now there are no consequences for murder, Macbeth is “in blood stepp’d so far”(3.4.136-37) that he feels going back to good would be as tedious as to continue with darkness. He still has the intuition that his deeds are treacherous and he should stop, but this he still ignores. Macbeth seeks more and more power, slowly blurring the lines of right and wrong and losing himself in the