Macbeth is truly a great tragic figure because his downfall cannot be explained away by the facile use of the mistaken translation of Aristotle’s “character flaw”, but rather because his story is one of the de-evolution of a person’s innate humanity through bad judgment based on the often prized characteristic of ambition. Rather than pushing him forward to greatness, ambition Macbeth degenerates backward from a rational individual to an amoral animal. The most fascinating element of Macbeth trajectory away from his humanity is that it does not happen immediately, but rather develops slowly, mirroring the progression toward rationality from birth to maturity. From the opening scenes when Macbeth illustrates a total grasp of logic, to his retention of some measure of compassion as decides to kill Duncan, to his faltering senses of sympathy surrounding the murder of Banquo until his total lack of sagacity at the end of the play, Shakespeare’s tragedy presents a complete portrait of a man whose both gains and loses the world as a result of the light and dark sides of ambition.
Ambition has the power to create both benevolent kings and ruthless despots, but regardless of the destination, the divergent paths these twin journeys take typically begin with great similarity. Macbeth’s aspirations toward greatness inspire the murder of Duncan, but with each subsequent act of iniquity his ambition becomes more disproportionate. It is this unregulated drive toward conquering all that stand between him and absolute rule that paradoxically creates a path that leads him to self-destruction. Too often, men who take this route begin with a deviant sense of morality and cannot distinguish between right and wrong regardless of whether great power or none of at all, but Macbeth is not simply the butcher that Malcolm claims; Macbeth is a cold-blooded killer with a conscience. Seen from this perspective, he might well be deemed the dark side of Hamlet. Even in the midst of scheming Duncan’s murder, Macbeth knows innately the full dimension of evil that his heart contemplates; so much so that he is almost successful in persuading himself to abandon his murderous thoughts before they achieve fruition. Macbeth is also unlike simplistic evil characters by virtue of his almost Hamletesque philosophize rants as he contemplates actions of evil and indulges in angst-ridden ruminations following the completion of such acts. Perhaps the most debatable aspect of Macbeth’s story lies in the debate over how culpable external forces are in the shaping of his destiny. From the prophecies of the Weird Sisters that inform his sense of fate and bring into the conversation the metaphysical notion that prophecies can still only be achieved by direct actions of those whose fates have been revealed, to the extent of Lady Macbeth’s influence on urging her husband to overcome what appears to be his moral revulsion toward taking things by murderous force, Macbeth is a far more complex individual that most Shakespearian villains, let alone modern day villains.
That role played the three Weird Sisters is particularly ambivalent. The opening scene of the play suggests the thematic complexity and duality that marks ambition with the paradoxical incantation “Fair is foul and foul is fair” that serves to underline the conflicting emotions at work in Macbeth. Ambition’s dark and light sides are enhanced by the lush suggestiveness of moral ambiguity in the fact that witches have long been naturally assumed to be agents of the devil, yet Macbeth expresses little questioning that their motives are anything but beneficent. This triple prophecy from the Weird
Sisters exposes a natural inclination of the human mind to grasp for upward mobility and it there is hardly surprising that Macbeth instantly begins to crave the suggestion that undreamt-of power lies in his wake. The Weird Sisters can certainly be seen as agents of change if not necessarily agents of evil. Nowhere in the prophecy does Macbeth hear that he must commit wanton acts of evil to achieve these promises. In other words, the Weird Sisters do not appear to possess the requisite power to force Macbeth do anything that is against his will. The underlying charge here is that regardless of the depth of conscience, when a carrot is dangled in front of the human mind, ambition takes over as the mechanism for grabbing and eating that carrot. Those who do evil to achieve this end must already have had a propensity such malevolence existing within them. Further complicating the role of the Weird Sisters, however, is that interesting fact that it is exactly at the moment that Macbeth is imbued with the greatest price that they appear and reveal to him his potential destiny.
The prophecies, which were told by the witches, are one of the factors which contributes to the decline of his strong character. It may even be possible that a divergent path may have been possible for Macbeth if the predictions had not been made about Macbeth becoming Thane of Cawdor, and an eventual king, he would still be focused on his career as a warrior. Greed and power drive humans to change themselves, when it is not needed. As a result of the prophecies, Macbeth’s curiosity was aroused, and was driven to become King of Scotland. As the play progresses, Macbeth slowly relies on the witches’ prophecies. Shakespeare uses the witches as a remedy for Macbeth’s curiosity, which corrupts his character.
Macbeth’s relationship with his wife, Lady Macbeth, is at once a confirmation of his capacity of good and his propensity to have his darker urges drawn to the surface of his personality. Lady Macbeth possesses and exceeding and perhaps unseemly admiration for the potential that she knows exists within her husband, referring to him as “my dearest partner of greatness” (I. v.) That his wife consistently and dramatically places a largesse of demand upon her husband due to her own expectations of his fate reveals both that she intuitively senses the bountiful ambition that lays untapped within him, as well as the means by which it can be primed. Another indication that a bifurcation exists within Macbeth is his Lady’s frustration condemnation that “I do fear thy nature; It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness” (I. v.). Lady Macbeth recognises that her husband has ambition, but also understands that his fault may be that lacks the ambition to exercise deeper ambition.
After Lady Macbeth peruses Macbeth’s letter about his fate as foretold by the Weird Sisters, she takes the step that Macbeth tellingly did not take. When Macbeth hears the prophecy he does not immediately assume that he witches are malevolent. Had he done so it is just as likely he would castigated them and even attempted to drive them away as he would have been to seek their kinship in doing the evil that must by necessity have been called for to make his destiny a reality. By contrast, once Lady Macbeth discovers that a supernatural elements exists in this turn of events, she specifically tries to get the spirits to help her own ambition by draining away her womanhood and better nature. She ultimately is able to convince Macbeth to do the same, bringing into question whether the Weird Sisters or any other supernatural entity did in fact sign a name to her contract. At the same time, Lady Macbeth at this point transforms into an agent of evil holding sexual enticements to Macbeth as a witches brew of persuasion. The seduction of Macbeth is an amalgam of his own ambition for the power and the ambition to prove false his wife’s contemptuous insult to manhood. Despite the fact that it was Macbeth who initiated the idea of murdering Duncan, Macbeth grapples with both his conscience and the justifiable fear of the unknown consequences of regicide. His philosophizing and contemplation terminates with the acknowledgment that ambition alone is not enough to compel him to murder. Lady Macbeth steps in to further the process along by utilising emotional blackmail before indulging in her secret power of questioning his manhood. This is the catalyst that urges Macbeth to follow through on his decision to murder the king. Lady Macbeth is a woman of infinitely stronger will than her husband and recognizes the womanly equivalent of male brute strength: calling the existence of that strength into question. Lady Macbeth at this point appears to be the conscienceless villain referred to earlier, but since foul is fair, even she too will later be revealed to have greater depths than are apparent at this stage.
Macbeth initially is locked in a fair struggle between his dark and light impulses, but he slowly becomes overwhelmed by the darker side of his nature. The Weird Sisters put in motion the idea of divergent destiny and Lady Macbeth convinced her husband it was necessary to engage in violent means to achieve the promises of the witches’ prophecy, but all points he still possessed the ability to say no. It may fairly be said that Macbeth only begins to fully take responsibility for his actions when he asks “What if we should fail?” (I. vii.) in response to the repulsiveness of the idea of killing Duncan. Macbeth’s fall continues gradually when he soon grasps the idea that he has not earned even the crown. Macbeth does not become totally corrupted at first after killing Duncan. Actually, Macbeth stays very skeptical and weary of the crime he has committed so much that he refuses to go back into Duncan’s room and finish the job (II, ii.). While Macbeth seems very sting on the outside, one sees how weak his is mentally. Macbeth craves being able to be completely powerful, and after the murder of King Duncan, Macbeth becomes much more involved in the thought of becoming all-powerful.
It was Banquo who would be heir to the throne, and not Macbeth. For this reason, Macbeth looks to the words of the prophecy of the Weird Sisters to justify his actions, while also being conscious and aware that this is an attempt at rationalization. According to the words of the Sisters, it was imperative upon Macbeth to kill Banquo with no delay, as well as all his descendants. Although that murder was easily accomplished, his attempt to put an end to Banquo’s line by killing his son Fleance, was not. This failure serves to be the channel by which a transition occurs in Macbeth. From this point on, the downward slope of Macbeth’s evolution toward utter evil picks up speed. He simply resolves his regret by acting on his initial impulses. “The very firstlings of my heart shall be the firstlings of my hand.” (IV. i.). Therefore, Macbeth’s inclinations become so overwhelming that he finally reaches his lowest level of humanity in the murders of the Macduffs. Macbeth effectively had not actual need to commit these murders, it was simply an impulse that he immediately acted upon, thereupon inflicting upon his homeland a curse of famine, death and disease.
Despite this descent in near-madness, however, Macbeth is revealed throughout the play to exhibit moments of deep suffering and even possible redemption. The murders that he committed deeply cause this compunction and guilt. In result, Macbeth is found unable to sleep, pray or even eat because of the murder of his king whom he admires. “Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep…” (II. ii). Macbeth is also seen a sense of penitence when he was found seeing the ghost of Banquo. He repeatedly demanded that he did not murder him. This is a deep symptom of redemption. However, this sorrow does not compare to the large extent he receives of it towards the end of the play. He sees the future as pointless. He decides that his life is not worth living. “I have lived long enough.” (V. iv.). He is utterly desolate; a mirage oasis surrounded by a desert of death, slowly come to the realization that life has nothing left to give him but curses. At the same time, however, the ambiguous nature of Macbeth is retained even in the last desperate throws. Macbeth’s truly tragic flaw may well be the two-edged sword known as self-actualisation. Macbeth is not psychotic or delusion; he at all times he retains the full impact of knowing the depths to which he is capable of going. By the end, that knowledge reveals that despite fulfilling his fate and the prophecies of the Weird Sisters to an exact degree, happiness was never mentioned in the bargain. The contract was devoid of emotion, consisting only in the basic fact of becoming more powerful. Once he even loses his wife and partner in crime, Macbeth’s tragic self-awareness forces him to admit that he lost everything and has nothing. Utterly alone, he is estranged from the rest of humanity.
Macbeth has fallen entirely from his original state. Life is hollow. The descent is complete. Life, that which Macbeth had hoped to live safely and happily, has now been concluded to be insignificant; an utter waste of time. Concerning the difference between good and bad, life now for Macbeth is all gray, clouded by cynicism. He simply does not care anymore, because if something signifies nothing then by definition it should also be treated as though it were actually devoid of meaning. And if one finds no meaning in life, one certainly doesn’t care about petty distinctions, such as good versus bad, morality versus immorality, life versus death. Nothing can be lower, emotionally, than this point in Macbeth’s regression. Despite his loneliness and shame, he still has a conscience. He continuously falls back on the optimism contained within the prophesy predictions of the witches. “Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth.” (IV, i.). He relies deeply upon this apparition, which engenders within him the illusion of invincibility, until he soon discovers out that Macduff was not precisely born of woman, but “was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped.” (V, vi.). Macbeth’s sanity is deteriorating and his wife, Lady Macbeth, is slowly going mad herself. She sees red spots of blood on her hands and tries to constantly wash them, saying, “out, out damn spot.” (V, I) She is afflicted with the guilt of the evil deed for which she took a part in. Her conscience has caught up with her, and has tangled her into a maze where she may never find the way out. Macbeth is miserable by the deterioration of Lady Macbeth. He begs the doctor to “find her disease and purge into a sound and pristine health,” (V, iii) but the doctor tells him that only “god” can save her.
Macbeth entire demise was due to his pursuing his goals. The witches awakened Macbeth’s ambition and Lady Macbeth encourages the crime necessary for his ambition to be realized. Both of these influences helped lead to his failure and death. His insecurities paved the way to fast decisions and rash actions to get rid of his perceived enemies, actions that he later often regrets. Tragedy fell only upon Macbeth because of his inner most yearnings, to be king. However, he would not have been considered a tragic hero without his admiration, flaw and redemption. These are all parts of the long downfall in which he endured. His life became tragic just to be king. Even when he received his wish he was not happy. He had too much guilt and regret to continue. His life was no longer worth living. So, he fought to the bitter end and died bravery.
Macbeth is the seen as a tragic hero. Macbeth’s character changes from a noble and respected individual at the beginning of the play to a despised and deceitful murderer. A number of factors led to this great change, some within Macbeth’s control and some not. The witch’s prophecies lead Macbeth into a false sense of security and make Macbeth more ambitious to gain positions of high authority at any cost. His wife, Lady Macbeth, is also a great influence on Macbeth and the development of his evil nature. Macbeth is a very complex character. His personality changes drastically from the beginning of the play to the end of the play. Macbeth constantly declines in his level of morality until his death at the end of the play. His change of character from good to evil and Macbeth’s attitude towards other characters, specifically Duncan, Banquo, Lady Macbeth is significantly affected. Macbeth interacts with Duncan only a minimal amount before Duncan’s death; Macbeth’s attitude towards him changes very rapidly. Before Macbeth hears the witches’ first prophecy, he is very close to Duncan, and would never even think of doing something against him. When the thought of murdering Duncan crosses his mind immediately after he finds that he has just been named Thane of Cawdor Macbeth’s personality begins to change. At first he doesn’t want to murder Duncan, but with the helpful persuasion of his overly ambitious wife, Macbeth agrees to kill Duncan. However, as the time to murder Duncan rapidly approaches Macbeth questions his motives. Macbeth is more than capable of utilising horrific means to achieve his ambitious ends. Macbeth starts out a heroic man of good doings, but his whole attitude completely changes because of the murders he commits. His relationships with many characters are broken or destroyed. Macbeth is the iconic example of what happens when ambition goes wrong.
