Human beings do not have a total control over their thoughts and emotions. The human mind can easily be influenced by changes in terms of social status, greediness, and ambition. The play, Macbeth by William Shakespeare and the novel The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith are types of artworks where these changes or events can unleash the worst characteristics of people, and a battle for control ensues, between the good side and the dark forces within.
To begin with, firstly, at the beginning of the play, Macbeth appears as a brave soldier and a warrior hero, whose fame on the battlefield led him to get a great honor from the king. While in the novel, with Tom, you can easily notice that at the beginning of his life, he moves from one job to another in lacking the required connections to make any success socially, professionally, or personally, and as a result, we saw a self-loathing, distrusting, and watchful character. I think Tom runs from his poverty and self-loathing through escaping from his own identity and mimicking other personalities.
Secondly, as I mentioned Macbeth was a brave and heroic character with power, before he met witches, and told him that he will become the Thane of Cawdor as a prophecy, “…will be king hereafter”. With his wife greedy and
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Thirdly, another feature that I could notice is how Macbeth undergoes terrible pangs of conscience and feels guilty before, during, and after commits the murder of King Duncan, and this can be notice in this quote “But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, ere we will eat our meal in fear and sleep in the affliction of these terrible dreams that shake us nightly: better be with the dead, whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace, Than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy”. However, with Tom we did not notice any kind of this, he represents the lack of feeling guilty, in fact, he is a cold-blooded killer, a man who both lies and murders in cold