Ambition is not an overtly evil quality; in fact ambition can be an important aspect in maintaining the integrity of the human soul. Ambition is what drives people to accomplish great things, and if a person were to have no ambition, they would remain still and ultimately achieve nothing their entire life. It is part of human nature to want to do great things or to make some sort of impact on the world, and ambition is a driving force for achieving this base human desire. Without ambition a person would never amount to anything and this would severely damage a person’s psyche; as people we have a need for achievement like we need to eat, and if this need is neglected we will wither away, just like we would starve without food. In Macbeth, …show more content…
Macbeth has always had ambition, but at the beginning of the play the integrity of Macbeth’s soul was maintained by a balance between all of his other good qualities. This was reinforced in the scene where Macbeth met the three witches and heard his prophecy, about becoming king. When Macbeth discovers hears from Ross that he has been appointed the Thane of Cawdor, it signified that the second part of the witches’ prophecy had come true and therefore allowed Macbeth to believe in the third part of the witches prophecy that he would become king of Scotland. When Macbeth began to believe that he would one day become king, his ambition flared up and presented him with a “horrid image” that made his “heart knock at [his] ribs” (1.3.137; 1.3.138). Macbeth’s ambition had presented him with a surefire way of becoming king--murdering the current King Duncan. However, this ambition is not what sent Macbeth down his path of self-destruction; in this very same scene Macbeth’s ambition is checked by his other morally sound qualities. The idea of killing Duncan--his cousin and his King-- is “against the use of nature” and it “shakes”