Macbeth by Shakespeare exhibits the qualities of a tragic hero expressed in The Poetics. The play opens up portraying Macbeth as a virtuous man, one who was a decorated and honored soldier of the King and an admired person by his peers. The audience respects Macbeth, because they feel as if he has a sense of “self.” This clearly changes when Macbeth’s tragic flaw is brought to light - vaulting and unstoppable ambition, which was driven by Lady Macbeth. Macbeth’s ambition causes him to “trip over himself” and he cannot seem to stop – one action just leads to another. “I have no spur/ To prick the sides of my intent, but only/ vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself, and falls on th’other…” (I.vii.25-28) Macbeth experiences peripeteia, …show more content…
Macbeth took it into his own hands to act irrationally on the witches’ words, which resulted in him doing bad things to change his fate. For example, rather than waiting his turn for the throne, because the witches’ told him he would have it one day, Macbeth’s desire to fulfill the prophecy sooner resulted in the murder of King Duncan. Towards the end of the play, the audience realizes that Macbeth’s life is nearing its end when his kingdom is being attacked from all different angles. It is at this point in the play where Macbeth recognizes the truth about his true identity, which is also known as an anagnorisis. Macbeth finally realizes that the witches’ have led him to his doom when all of their seemingly impossible “caveats” in their predictions turn into reality. For example, the witches’ foreshadowed that Birnham Wood, a forest, will move onto Dunsinane Hill during Macbeth’s downfall, which not only seemed unimaginable, but unthreatening, because an inanimate object cannot take on animate characteristics. This prediction actually turned to life when the army used pieces of the trees in Birnham Wood to shield themselves as they marched over Dunsainne Hill onto