Macbeth's Passion For Self-Conflict In Macbeth

A story without a struggle is not much of a story at all, is it? Truly, what is the point of reading a story if the characters presented are not striving for a want or a need. Authors alike choose to write about relatable content to connect their readers to their work. The esteemed writer William Faulkner believed that “...the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself alone can make good writing because that is worth writing about, worth the agony and sweat.” In a likewise manner, William Shakespeare denotes his passion for self-conflict in his celebrated play “Macbeth”. Through the character eponymous of the title, he suffers indisputably through his own ambition, guilt, and greed. By means of the three witches alluding to Macbeth's

With a heavy guilty conscious, it is difficult to function; even for the insane. Macbeth’s downward spiral into his inner self-conflict is deep-rooted in his guilt over the murders of King Duncan, Banquo, and the family of Macduff. However, all of these actions were brought upon him by his own traits of ambition and greed. In one particular situation, Macbeth hallucinates an image of floating dagger moments before he is about to murder Duncan. “Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? Or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?” (Shakespeare 2.1.33-40) Macbeth questions his own sanity as his own mind is playing tricks on him. Macbeth has yet to commit the heinous crime and he is already beginning to feel pangs of guilt in the form of visions. He follows the vision of the dagger into Duncan’s room where he murders him whilst he sleeps. Subsequently after Macbeth is done, he mentions that he thought he could hear someone speaking to