Lady Macbeth Ambition Analysis

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In the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, the story started with Macbeth being a loyal and brave thane to King Duncan. After the three witches had told him that he was eventually going to become king, he was over taken by ambition and power, which led to the kings’ death and Macbeth taking over the throne. There are many arguments about whose ambition led to all the murders and events in the play. The actions and words of Lady Macbeth could have led to the encouragement of Macbeth, which made him act upon his feelings, which ultimately led the murders and everything else that had happened around those events. The words of the witches could have also driven him to act upon everything. Undoubtedly, Lady Macbeth had a playing part in the ambition …show more content…

Lady Macbeth is said to be the most ambitious in the play and that definitely shows throughout. At the beginning of the play its easily shown that Macbeth was heavily influenced by his wife’s ideas. Further into the play, Macbeth was kind of reluctant about going through with killing Duncan because if he did that, he had the risk of losing the positive opinions people had about him. His wife knew what his weak spot was and once she heard about his hesitance about killing Duncan, she went straight to attacking his courage. She says that she herself would kill her own child in order to achieve her own goals. She then proceeds to say that,” But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail.” All of which she says eventually convinces Macbeth that he should go through with the murder in order to show his masculinity. This shows how much she truly influences Macbeth in the decisions he …show more content…

If you look at everything, it does make sense that Lady Macbeth could have been the driving ambition, but it also looks like the witches could have played an extensive part also. There’s not just one driving ambition, everything in the play pieced together to push Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to go through with all of it. The witches and Lady Macbeth’s own ambition worked together to show Macbeth his own desires and lead him through the dark. Without all four of them, Macbeth would not have been able to kill all the people that he did. He had no desire to do so since he had no idea that later in his life, he was going to become