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Macbeth Excessive Ambition Analysis

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The play, Macbeth by William Shakespeare is a tale filled with plenty of twists and turns. It tells of a brave soldier, Macbeth, who receives a prediction fortuned by three witches, that one day he will become the king of Scotland. Macbeth being overwhelmed receiving such news, is overcome with irrational ideas on how he will become king and takes matters into his own hands by murdering current royal man in charge, King Duncan. With this being said, Macbeth by William Shakespeare, uses Macbeth’s character flaw of excessive ambition as the leading factor to his downfall and helps the reader recognize that when morals are ignored, ambition can turn into an issue. To begin with, Macbeth’s over ambition is on display after he has met with the trio …show more content…

This reveals how overly ambitious Macbeth has become after hearing nothing but prophecies. Additionally, nothing is guaranteed, yet he is confident cold blooded murderer is the only solution to becoming king. He finds no proper reason to take King Duncan’s life other than his ”.../Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself…” (Shakespeare 1.7.25-28). Macbeth has recognized his unusual issue but still is not bothered with this mindset which eventually leads to the inevitable event of Macbeth taking King Duncan’s life. Furthermore, Macbeth ultimately begins to lose sense of himself. After this horrendous incident, Macbeth begins feeling a great amount of guilt placed upon himself. He grasps the idea of taking an innocent man’s chance to live for his benefit and questions whether “...all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood /Clean from my hand” (Shakespeare 2.2. 61-62). This highlights Macbeth’s recognition and unsurprisingly, his downfall. Shortly after, Macbeth deals with phases of paranoia and hallucinations when he struggles being able to tell fiction from reality and can not identify if “...this a dagger which I see before me...” (Shakespeare

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