Fate And Freewill In Macbeth Analysis

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The themes of fate and freewill fit into Shakespeare’s Macbeth through the role of the witches’ prophecies as well as Macbeth’s own actions to do everything in his power to make those prophecies come true, fate and freewill complement each other as well as contradict each other many times throughout the play. Shakespeare’s Macbeth, is a dark tragedy surrounding a young general by the name of Macbeth, who learns that he has the chance to be king. Learning of this possibility, Macbeth loses sight of reality in the name of power and destroys everything in his path in order to gain the power he so desperately yearns for, gaining power as he sinks further and further into more evil tendencies. (Ribner) After winning a bloody war, a wounded soldier Many things happen too soon, so that tidings are like serpents that strike without warning. 'The King comes here tonight,' says a messenger, and Lady Macbeth is startled out of all composure: 'Thou'rt mad to say it!' (Doren) Van Doren, who describes the very chain of events mentioned earlier. Macbeth’s undoing ultimately begins when the witches tell him that he will be (Macbeth) How fate is set in stone, however the actions taken to achieve that fate are not. The unspeakable actions by which Macbeth seems to follow blindly, are blanketed in his mind as excuses. The excuse being that Macbeth must do these things, murder the king, Banquo, Macduff, for the fate of himself, so that he may be king. So in terms of fate, he is to be king, but his free will is the choice he makes to murder King Duncan in order to secure his prophesied fate. In this way, fate and free will work together as well as contradict each other. His fate is predetermined, but his free will is what gets him to reach that point of being king. As with most of Shakespeare’s stories towards the end of his career, Macbeth leaves us with yet another tragic ending for the main character, a character whose actions led to their own

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