Sin In Macbeth

For the Macbeths and Adam and Eve, sin is also cyclical; as Colston says, “sin creates a proclivity for sin” (83). Colston claims that “Macbeth is made for war, not peace” as evidenced by his endeavors before the play (64). Although I resist the notion that Macbeth has no agency in killing, it is logical that his ambition to murder blossoms at least in part from his “appetite formed by violent action” (76). Certainly, his first sin of ambition soon spreads into many more; by the end of the play, Macbeth is “materially guilty of breaking all ten commandments” (83). To name just a few, he kills many people, bears false witness against innocents, covets his neighbor’s position, and worships the god of ambition exclusively. Similarly, Adam and

Modern secularism holds the opposite, that sin cannot destroy the committer provided that he or she does not obsess over it. Colston writes, “Shakespeare, however, shows a pair of sinners utterly ruined in this life by failing to follow rules that make sense for the kind of beings they are” (66). He refers, of course, to the Macbeths’ and their ultimate demises as a result of their ambitious rebellion. But his statement also fits the fall of Adam and Eve, who are “ruined” when they become mortal because they fail to follow rules that make sense for their status as immortal beings. A catechism from Shakespeare’s day captures the destructive quality of these (ambition, murder, rebellion) and all sin: that it “not only offends God but undoes His works and violates nature” (Colston

Just as Adam and Eve desired higher knowledge than God had granted them, the Macbeths are truly driven by “the unlawful and restless desire in men to be of higher estate than God hath given or appointed unto them” (Homily 121). Yet the layers of Biblical allusions that Shakespeare uses to connect these stories reveal a more complicated view of ambition than just unmitigated vice. Many scholars have suggested that Macbeth’s poignancy lies in how we pity the titular character, “because as humans we know how easily passions overtake us. This is the truth of the human condition” (Langis 51). Although Macbeth and the Bible certainly support the idea that sin is inevitable, I resist the conclusion that human agency is entirely futile against passions like ambition. Still others have juxtaposed Macbeth’s apparent condemnation of ambition with American pride in the “rags-to-riches mythos” of our history and modern culture (King 55). The obvious rejection of ambition in Shakespeare’s day makes this cultural relativism comparison tempting and provocative, but the fact remains that this story holds clout across virtually every time and culture. My analysis of Macbeth’s treatment of ambition through connection to the fall of Adam and Eve yields the conclusion that this study of ambition is rendered perpetually relevant by its universality. The fact that “Macbeth is