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Similarities Between As I Lay Dying And Macbeth

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In As I Lay Dying and Macbeth, certain characters naturally readjust the extent to which they reveal their true selves to the outside world following the demise of their leader. This culminates in a shift of power and leads the characters on a distinct and troubling journey. The death of a matriarch or patriarch in both As I Lay Dying and Macbeth shifts the power by revealing individual agendas and the justification of unsavory actions. In As I Lay Dying, Addie’s death as the matriarch of the Bundren family shifts the power by uncovering the true intentions of Anse, her husband. Before she dies, Addie expresses that she wants to be buried in Jefferson. When she does, Anse appears obsessed with burying her there. Her death shifts the power …show more content…

Macbeth instantly clings to the witches’ prophecy that he will be promoted to Thane of Cawdor and King. A shift in power is created as Lady Macbeth crafts a plot to murder Duncan, the king of Scotland, so that Macbeth may gain power by ascending the throne. The power in their marriage leans at first towards Lady Macbeth as she tells Macbeth, “But screw your courage to the sticking-place, / And we'll not fail” (I.vii.60-61). Lady Macbeth places pressure on Macbeth and ensures him that the plot will unfold rightly. By challenging him to follow through with the plan and kill Duncan, Lady Macbeth establishes herself as an ambitious and manipulative counterpart. Macbeth’s vision is obscured with evil, and he loses sight of the importance of relationships as he disregards others. He says, “Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires” (I.iv.52-53). Macbeth suspects that his dark desires for the throne and for power will be revealed. He hopes that God does not exist and that his crime will go unpunished. This premeditation on Macbeth’s part conveys the mental processing that went into his ultimate decision to go through with killing Duncan. By asking that the light not illuminate his desires, Macbeth crafts secrecy and careful thought around his …show more content…

. .The witches are exile from that violent order, inhabiting their own sisterly community” (Brown 159). Macbeth’s encounters with the witches is what releases his lust for power, which the play portrays as evil. From this point of view, the witches were the key force behind Macbeth’s lust for power, and they represent a sisterly community that works separately from the violence of society. Macbeth is a very ambitious character, and his desire to be King drives and shapes his behavior and sets him up for an unsavory sequence of final events, which is caused by his indecisiveness and his understanding of success. This lust for power and improved social status leads Macbeth to an evil that fails his destiny and leads to his downfall. He justifies his actions through the belief that fate is working on his side, and he uses the witches’ prophecy as a scapegoat on which to blame his poor

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Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a tragedy that involves many themes, one that stood out to me is grief. I will show how the grief of Lady Macbeth lead her and her husband to their bitter ends. Grief changes people and that can cause them to do things that they normally would not have done in an attempt to deal with it and move on.

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In play Macbeth, Shakespeare reveals that an individual’s great desire for power will lead him/her to perform consequential deeds that will scar his/her conscience and change the outcome of his/her life eternally. Macbeth is informed by three witches that he is going to become king and this initiates Macbeth’s thought of becoming powerful. Macbeth doesn’t act on his thoughts until he tells his wife, Lady Macbeth, that he could become king. Lady Macbeth is extremely power hungry and does all she can to convince Macbeth to be just as desirable as her. Together, they come up with a plan to murder King Duncan, so that Macbeth can become king like the witches foretold.

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The Thane of King Duncan, Macbeth hears a prophecy that he himself will become king later on in the future after King Duncan. This then leads to Macbeth being overcome by greed. Since Macbeth greeds to be king so bad, he murders King Duncan and takes his place of the throne. Macbeth starts to live with so much guilt and fear that he commits even more murders to have his power safe. Macbeth is so confident in the prophecies that his life comes to a downfall and he gets killed by the people he did wrong.

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At the beginning of William Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ the protagonist Macbeth is described as ‘brave’, ‘noble’ and ‘honourable’, however Lady Macbeth’s and Macbeths desire for power consumes them. Macbeth’s ambition overrides his conscience and transformed his greatest strength into his greatest weakness. Macbeth’s inability to resist temptations that led him to be greedy for power, Macbeth’s easily manipulative nature which allowed his mind to be swayed, Macbeth having no self control and his excessive pride was what allowed him to renew his previously honourable and celebrated title into one of an evil ‘tyrant’. Macbeth is led by the prophecies of the witches after they foretell he will become the Thane of Cawdor. Not only the witches, but also his wife easily manipulate Macbeth as she attacks his manhood in order to provoke him to act on his desires.

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Macbeth, commonly dated back to have being written in 1606, is one of William Shakespeare’s most celebrated plays and discusses the imbalance that its protagonist produces when he commits the act of killing the king. This imbalance does not only have effects on politics but causes chaos in nature, due to the ungodly murder. Shakespeare uses the characters of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and the three witch sisters to present the dangers of the consequences of committing acts of the unnatural.

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(Act 1, Scene 7) Through the power of manipulation, Lady Macbeth powerfully challenges Macbeth to commit to the plan to murder King Duncan by exclaiming “screw your courage to the sticking-place. And we’ll not fail.” (Act I, Scene 7) It is through her words that Lady Macbeth has her husband, Macbeth, murder King Duncan and achieve her great desire to become Queen of Scotland. Unfortunately, the death of King Duncan begins Macbeth’s reign of tyranny, which also begins the emergence of Lady Macbeth’s guilty conscience.

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Dear diary, I have not been well; it has been many nights since I last had a good night’s sleep. Ever since my husband was told about the prophecies, he hadn’t been thinking about anything else, and this is all my fault, I was the one who kept on pushing him towards doing the deed, questioning his manhood and dignity, which made him so eager to commit the crime, and take the king’s thrown. The moment Macbeth killed the beloved King Duncan, our lives have been turned upside down. I am a victim of sleep deprivation, tossing and turning in my bed every night. Duncan’s murder has been on my mind day and night, haunting and tormenting my conscience.

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The Macbeths’ marriage, like the couple themselves, is abnormal, particularly by the standards of its time. Yet despite their odd power dynamic, the two of them seem surprisingly attached to one another, particularly compared to other married couples in Shakespeare’s plays, in which romantic luck appears mainly during courtship and marriages tend to be troubled. Macbeth offers an exception to this rule, as Macbeth and his wife are partners in the truest sense of the word. Of course, the irony / mockery of their “happy” marriage is clear—they are united by their crimes, their mutual madness, and their mounting alienation from the rest of humanity.

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Although Macbeth is apprehensive about the act of murdering Duncan, Lady Macbeth ultimately convinces him to do it. Shakespeare uses Lady Macbeth to mark a moral turning point for Macbeth as he goes through with the murder. “Come, thick night/And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,/That my keen knife see no wound it makes/Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark” (I.5.57-59) Through her persuasion Lady Macbeth causes the light inside of Macbeth to fade away as he becomes more evil and dark. This marks a moral turning point for Macbeth as he begins his descent into immorality. Shakespeare uses imagery by referring to darkness as a blanket, covering the immoral and corrupt actions of her and Macbeth.

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This once “noble Macbeth” (1.2.67), listens to the prophecies given by the witches, which causes his desire to be king to be unleashed. If these foretelling had not been offered to Macbeth, his selfish ambition would not have been a component in the murder. In the beginning of Macbeth, we find Macbeth to have no strength in mind. He cannot make his own decisions without the aid of his wife, Lady Macbeth. Although he is a ‘soldier’ on the outside, he is a coward on the inside.

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Macbeth’s failures are the direct result of the poor choices he makes when influenced by outside forces. The external influences of Lady Macbeth’s forcefulness, the witches’ prophecies, and his own blind greed conspired to ruin him. This demonstrates that people can be easily manipulated into self-depriving choices. Macbeth’s first failure occurred when the witches influenced him with their prophecy.

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Macbeth’s ambition is one of the most prominent things that drive Macbeth in the play and truly becomes evident when he hears of the Witches prophecies. When the witches stop talking, he demands to know more. “Stay you imperfect speakers, tell me more” (I, III, 73-74). This portrays his excessive curiosity on the subject as well as his craving for more desirable prophecies. This ambitious nature and craving for power is also demonstrated only moments after hearing the witches, when he starts formulating a plan to kill Duncan in order to make the third prophecy come true.

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Before Addie dies Anse promises her to bury her in her hometown of Jefferson and once she dies nothing seems to stop Anse from finishing this takes. Him getting her to Jefferson to be buried seems to be Anse’s way on coping with her death and almost like his last duty to her. Floods, broken bones, and not even fire could stop him from finishing his task. Although not even twenty-four hours after Anse buried Addie he went out and found another wife at the end of the book. Some might have seen Anse’s determination to bury as sweet, but in most of the book Anse acts selfishly and blames most of his problems on his bad luck rather than taking responsibility for it.

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