Untae Langis points out that as the play opens, “Macbeth reveals himself caught between rational and appetitive will, virtue, and self-esteem… When Lady Macbeth chides him for having cold feet… Macbeth’s cowardice foretells the yielding of his desires for good to the desire for worldly power”. This desire for power is valued because Macbeth has innate nobility, and he has honorable character at the beginning of the play. One of his many tragic flaws includes ambition, which leads to his downfall at the end of the
“Let not light see my black and deep desires: The eye that wink at the hand; yet let that be which the eye fears,when it is done, to see” (Shakespeare 1.4 58-60). Macbeth is admitting that he has his own hidden desires and wants to become king because of his own passion and drive. He is trying to justify what he knows he will have to do in order to make himself king. He knows that he has to kill to become king and to keep his throne, and is trying to convince himself that this will all be worth it in the end when he becomes king. Some would argue that Lady Macbeth made him king, but his own desires were truly what fuelled his ambition to do whatever it took to make himself king.
(Shakespeare 1.3.52-55). Macbeth is influenced by his greed for power to use ruthless actions, in this case to kill Duncan to receive the crown he thinks he needs to earn that power. Overwhelmed by his greed, he is already thinking about the “murder” as he
Like all of Shakespeare’s other plays, “Macbeth’s” protagonist Macbeth is incredibly successful but suffers from one fatal flaw, his great ambition. His ambition will be the cause of his great success but ultimately also of his downfall. The man’s ambition drives him to seize every opportunity to promote his own agenda. His ambition hurts him the most when he decides to kill King Duncan and Macduff.
A man, goaded by his wife, murders time and again to satisfy his hunger for power, slowly driving himself into insanity through his ambition. Ambition, both a blessing and a curse, lead Macbeth to a series of betrayals and murders of and by those closest to him. Conspiring with his wife in Act 1, Lady Macbeth had convinced Macbeth that by killing Duncan, King of Scotland, he could become the next King. He and Lady Macbeth planned the whole thing; who they would frame, how they would get past the guards, which one of them should be the one to do it, and how would they hide the knives once the deed had been accomplished. At the last second, Macbeth appeared to have a change of heart, but then his wife taunted him, insulting his manhood.
In Macbeth, Shakespeare intensifies the theme that unchecked ambitions cause an individual to partake in wrongdoings, resulting in an immense amount of guilt, by using the motifs of blood and sleep. The story of Macbeth is about Macbeth, an honorable soldier, getting a prophecy that he'll become king. He becomes King, but to maintain his status, he kills an increasing number of people with growing paranoia and guilt. Unchecked ambition is an excessive desire to achieve a certain goal, blinding an individual from possible consequences. This excessive desire is demonstrated by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth throughout Shakespeare’s play.
Macbeth was a good and loyal warrior for king Duncan but after he heard the witches predictions, it changed the person inside him. This play is from one of the best writer of all time William Shakespeare. The play is “The Tragedy of Macbeth". It's a summary about how Macbeth became king in the eleventh century and after he took the throne.
Right from the beginning his desires took him over which led to his quick decision of his killing spree and the everlasting effects that coincided with it. Overall, this quote portrays the amount of ambition that he contains and also foreshadows the many deaths in the plot that will eventually lead to his downfall. Furthermore, Lady Macbeth was not just an innocent stand byer during these murders, she was a key pawn in all the action. In fact, she urged Macbeth to kill King Duncan which portrayed her utmost amount of power she held over Macbeth, “O, proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear.
The witches tell Macbeth “that [he] shalt be king hereafter”(1.3.53), foreshadowing his impractical rise to power. As Macbeth prepares to kill Duncan, he draws his dagger and says,”Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going/And such an instrument I was to use”(2.1.54-55). This exemplifies Macbeth’s true and impatient motives as he was never told to kill Duncan, rather chose to out of his freewill. Killing Duncan wasn’t enough though, as Macbeth needed someone to blame the murder on, so he framed the guards who were there to protect Duncan. Lady Macbeth decides to “smear/The sleepy grooms with blood”(2.2.63-64), which Macbeth could have objected to, but still continued, which made him worse of a person, steering him into a disastrous path.
Macbeth’s ambitions influence him to attain his desire for power. This ambition drives him to become reckless for the sake of reaching his goals. This recklessness leads to the murder of Duncan- the first in a line of murders Macbeth commits to reach his power. These murders represent Macbeth’s gradual loss of morality.
1-28. Here, we see Macbeth struggle internally, as he must decide if he will put his morals aside and kill King Duncan for the power of being king himself. Initially, Macbeth starts planning the murder and creating detailed solutions to problems that may arise during it. We see this when he says, “If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well, It were done quickly.” (Act I Scene VII, ll.1-2.)
Moreover, this realization leads Lady Macbeth to think about murdering King Duncan for her and Macbeth to gain power. In addition to Lady Macbeth’s cruel character, she reveals her desirous thoughts towards the crown. Lady Macbeth continues her speech and mentions her unquenching thirst to take Duncan’s power. “Make thick my blood. Stop the access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace with the effect and it!”
“If good, why do I yield to that suggestion[killing Duncan]/Whose horrid image doth unify my hair” (I, III, 144-145). This quote indicates that the force of ambition is so strong within Macbeth that even he himself cannot understand why it is making him think of killing Duncan. Likewise, Macbeth’s ambition to become king is further emphasized after Duncan names his son Malcolm as his successor. Here, Macbeth says that he will have to “oerleap,/For in my way it [Malcolm] it lies” (I, III, 55-57).
Ambition is a natural part of human existence, every person has it at least a little. It is when ambition grows too large and takes control of us that it becomes dangerous. It becomes obsessive and soon nothing will stop the person obsessed. Just by looking around at our world today, one can clearly see the results of unchecked ambition. Unchecked ambition can be destructive to a society and cause the society's downfall.
Lady Macbeth influences Macbeth to kill Duncan, but he continues to have second thoughts about it (i.vii.31-34) and feels terribly guilty afterwards (II.ii.63-66). However, following the murder of Duncan, Macbeth loses any ethics he had left. Macbeth kills the servants, Banquo, and Macduff’s whole family in cold-blooded murder. On the other hand, when Banquo ponders the witches prophecy for him, he contemplates the thought of having to kill someone to get power, but he quickly shuts it down (III.i.9-11).
