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Who Is To Blame For Macbeth's Downfall

1028 Words5 Pages

Macbeth, Welcome to Your Paper. The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play written by William Shakespeare around 1606 that focuses on a Scottish man named Macbeth, and his wife, and their desire for power. Macbeth is started on the road to self destruction when he is given his future by a group of witches. Rather than letting life take its path, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth try to control their own future and cheat their way to becoming powerful tyrants. The downfall of Macbeth was the result of the witches’ predictions, his own guilt, and Lady Macbeth’s temptations. Firstly, the witches, or pow are at fault for Macbeth’s downfall because they lit the fuse that set Macbeth to want to change his future. Macbeth and Banquo do not, at first, recognize what …show more content…

Despite the witches’ unsightly appearance, Macbeth disregarded their instincts and trusted them anyway. The witches tell Macbeth his future and build up his ego by saying, “All hail, Macbeth!”(1.3.48). “Psychoanalytic criticism has focused on the witches as malignant mothers feeding reckless ambition and false security to an infantile Macbeth”(Favila 8). The witches told Macbeth that first he would become the Thane of Cawdor and then become the king. While at first he was unsure of his fortune, he fell for the witches’ trap after their first prediction of becoming the thane came true. “Two truths are told, as happy prologues to the swelling act […] This supernatural soliciting cannot be ill; cannot be good. If ill, why hath it given me earnest of success, commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor”(1.3.128-133). But yet, even after Macbeth murders King Duncan, the audience still is not quite angry at him. “The malignant hags are the primary reasons for our ability to feel true sympathy for Macbeth despite his heinous crimes”(Mabillard). So while most blame Macbeth’s downfall on only himself, it is partially the fault of the weird

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