A theodicy attempts to explain why a just and good God would ever allow the existence of evil on earth. The Free Will Theodicy states that the reason that God would not prevent suffering is that “the suffering of the innocent is justified by the existence of free will”. This theodicy also claims that there are natural evils (such as accidents, diseases, etc.) and moral evils, and that moral evils only exist due to humans misusing their sense of free will. According to the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare the awareness that a deed is immoral is what makes fulfilling the deed evil. Nothing an animal does can be seen as cruel because their actions are purely instinctual, mankind is unique in that we have free will and sense of right and wrong, which means that we are the only species capable of true cruelty or evil.
Although the three witches admittedly had a great amount of supernatural foresight as well as a significant part to play regarding Macbeth’s decision to murder the king, the extent of their actual power or control over Macbeth’s actions and fate is debatable. Before the character of Macbeth is introduced, he is said to be
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If the regicide was truly predecided destiny and had been foretold by the witches, why then would the couple be culpable in regards to the murder? Macbeth’s hallucinations of daggers and ghosts and Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking and eventual suicide are not products of fate, they are afflictions of the mind. The blood is on Macbeth’s hands, he is responsible for what his own hands did, not a prophecy or a witch or the taunting of his wife. It is what makes the play a tragedy, to see a man ruined by his own free will. Macbeth’s “black and deep desires” (1.4.58) is what drives his actions, not a supernatural entity, and his choice to commit a deed he knows to be evil is what causes him and his wife their