ipl-logo

The Destruction Of The Mind In Macbeth By William Shakespeare

914 Words4 Pages

Oh My! *Ting* *Ting* Are those bells? No, they are the knocks of hell which call for the sinners. These knocks call for the characters Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in the play, written by William Shakespeare, to commit acts which will lead to their demise. Both experience psychosis, leading to hallucinations and altering their perception of reality. Macbeth’s obsession to take control makes him strips him of noble traits and also bolsters his pride in his power. The play, Macbeth by William Shakespeare, shows that the rejection of God consequently will lead to the destruction of the mind. This destruction of the mind comes from a state of psychosis and the obsession to gain more control. Firstly, Psychotic episodes are the results of the …show more content…

the obsession to gain more control will bolster one’s pride. Macbeth goes to the witches for another prophecy as he is afraid of a coup happening to him in Scotland. The withes’ apparitions tell him that he needs to beware of Macduff and that he will die from someone that is born from a woman. In response, say says,” Then live, Macduff, What need I fear thee?” (4.1.81). By choosing to meet with the witches he is putting the title and the power of God onto the witches thereby rejecting God. The witches place a false sense of security in his mind which increases his insane obsession with control making him more prideful of being king. Moreover, the obsession to gain more control will also result in the loss of one’s Empathy. After becoming king, Macbeth finds out that Lady Macbeth is very ill. During this, he also finds out that Macduff and Malcolm might be getting ready for a fight with him. After he finds that she dies he says,” She would have died hereafter” (5.5.17). When he finds out that his wife dies all has to say is that she is bound to die. The loss of Macbeth’s empathy begins after he first kills Duncan. Killing Duncan is when Macbeth defies God as he kills God’s messenger. After killing Duncan, it got very easy and frequent for him to kill others such as Banquo because Macbeth loses his compassion and empathy from each death he encounters. Macbeth kills them in his pursuit of more control. And it is this obsession for more power over others which destroys his mind. In conclusion, Macbeth’s obsessive pursuit of control leads to his downfall. He strays from do when his desire for power causes him to lose empathy and gain pride which makes him

Show More
Related
526 Words | 3 Pages

Macbeth And His Schizophrenia Picture this: a world full of witches, prophecies, and bloodshed. Welcome to William Shakespeare's famous tragedy, Macbeth. Some may argue that Macbeth's erratic behavior and hallucinations throughout the play are signs of schizophrenia. However, a closer examination reveals that Macbeth's actions and psychological state are better understood within the framework of guilt, ambition, and moral deterioration. This essay will argue that Macbeth has schizophrenia and show how his character represents the tragic consequences of a flawed individual driven by his ambitions and inner demons.

Read More
953 Words | 4 Pages

Macbeth goes into a berserk and crazed state, trying to communicate with this spiritual presence that no other guest is able to see. Research indicates that these episodes are not uncommon in the behavior of psychopaths. Distinctively violent behavior is known to occur during a manic episode (“Diagnostic and Statistical Manual”). This is yet another indication of Macbeth’s psychopathic mental state, which at this point is completely

Read More
767 Words | 4 Pages

Bryanna E. McCool Mrs. Dean British Literature 25 January 2018 Mental Illness in Shakespeare’s Macbeth The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, a play wrought with prophecies, deception, guilt, and death, brings light to the symptoms of mental illnesses and their effects on the human brain’s ability to reason, trust, and act in times of pressure. Both Macbeth and his lady are plagued by mental illness, and the effects of their illness only grow as the play evolves. Macbeth’s symptoms of schizophrenia and anxiety, as well as Lady Macbeth’s anxiety as well as hallucinations that eventually push her to suicide prove that not only can mental illness alter the way a person sees a situation, but it can also drive them to harm others and themselves.

Read More
1113 Words | 5 Pages

Greed for power leads corrupt leaders to pursue power through ruthless and violent ways, putting their countries in an unstable state. Macbeth commits murders and violent acts to earn his absolute power, but his corrupt mindset of yearning power leads to instability in the Scotland. After hearing from the witches, Macbeth admits that, “My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical/ Shakes so my single state of man/ That function is smother'd in surmise /and nothing is but what is not.”

Read More
1385 Words | 6 Pages

Macbeth’s Downfall to Power The human psyche inherently has a desire for power, whether it be an attempt to control others or escape domination and gain autonomy in one’s own life. Pleonexia, the extreme greed for something that rightfully belongs to others, acts as a toxic impulse in mankind, often resulting in immoral actions to obtain the power one desires. Literature emphasizes this corrupt mindset by depicting a character’s dissatisfaction with mediocre control. The character continuously craves more until meeting his tragic flaw, ultimately resulting in the character drowning in the fear of defeat, making a misjudgment as he approaches his downfall.

Read More
930 Words | 4 Pages

Shakespeare’s understanding of the human psyche, before the word psyche was even imagined, is obvious in the character of Lady Macbeth as she suffers from classic symptoms of PTSD including her feelings of strong guilt, her delusions, and her depression. When Lady Macbeth receives the letter from her husband that states the opportunity for him to be king, she immediately jumps on board to kill the current king. After the cold-blooded

Read More
824 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
385 Words | 2 Pages

Circling through the mind, saying one shouldn’t have done this, or done that. Question why they did it, or why they didn’t. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, some of the main characters, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, reveal their thoughts after horrible actions that have been committed, admitting their guilt. For example, after Macbeth murders Duncan at Inverness, in an attempt to rid himself of the action he has just committed and clear his mind, he reflects upon himself and wonders whether he’ll be able to let the murder go.

Read More
1810 Words | 8 Pages

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth offers little scope for pragmatic criticism, as from beginning to end the tragedy is loaded with mythological thought and supernatural powers. If such unearthly occurrences are not to be considered real, such as the appearance of the weird sisters and Banquo’s ghost at Macbeth’s dining hall, but instead as apparitions of Macbeth, like the Ghosts in Richard III,1 then these experiences seem to directly suggest the presence of a plethora of colorful characters that modern psychologists and psychiatrists could rather easily diagnose with some sort of mental disorder. While Shakespeare, throughout his various works, gives us perfect examples of such characters, the two leading characters of Macbeth have both been analyzed

Read More
450 Words | 2 Pages

He ponders why, if the witches' words are ill, they have already been proven true with his recent appointment as Thane of Cawdor. On the other hand, if their words are good, he questions why he finds himself drawn to the disturbing suggestion that he might become king, a thought that fills him with both fear and excitement. This passage is significant to the rest of the play as it foreshadows Macbeth's internal struggle and the

Read More
615 Words | 3 Pages

In scene three of act one, Macbeth and Banquo meet the weird sisters, who give them prophecies. They tell Macbeth that he will be king of Scotland, and by the end of the act, he decides to murder Duncan, and he is more worried about “if [he and his wife] should fail” than the morality of the act (1.7.68). This is often seen as the moment when Macbeth becomes a bad person, but any person who puts up so little resistance to murder was never a great person. This, however, is not the only murder this so-called great man commits without a second

Read More
632 Words | 3 Pages

The Demise of Macbeth What does it mean to be a leader? Being a leader entails being a fearless individual who devotes their time to helping the greater good. To Macbeth, being a leader meant getting as much power as possible. Macbeth is a play written by William Shakespearethat tells the story of a naive soldier who let his chance at power corrupt him and eventually got killed because of it.

Read More
1021 Words | 5 Pages

At first these thoughts remain hidden, but when the witches approach him with their predictions his desires reform his character. The witches wait for Macbeth and tell him series of predictions. The specific prediction, “All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!” (1.3.51) causes Macbeth’s desire to become more intensified. Their prediction that he would become king brings a change in his character.

Read More
876 Words | 4 Pages

Macbeth started off as a valiant and courageous soldier, who would do anything for the king. By the end of the play, Macbeth was a tyrant and a horrible leader who killed those who trusted him to maintain the throne. It takes many factors to take a strong man and transform him into an evil monster. Macbeth’s downfall was caused by the deception and temptation of the witches and their prophecies, Lady Macbeth’s greed and aspirations for her husband to be king, and Macbeth’s own greed, jealousy and ambition.

Read More
1688 Words | 7 Pages

Macbeth is unsatisfied with his life as king and is worried about the prophecies given to Banquo. He meets with the witches for a second time and gets tricked into believing false information. Not knowing the information was untrue, Macbeth believes, “Whate’er thou art, for thy good caution, thanks;/ Thou hast harp’d my fear aright.” (4.1.72-73). The witches shown Macbeth three apparitions, one being an armed head, one being a bloody child and the last being a crowned child with a tree in his hand.

Read More

More about The Destruction Of The Mind In Macbeth By William Shakespeare

Open Document