Lady Macbeth, A Manifestation of Evil

Lady Macbeth, A Manifestation of Evil

To truly say if the character, Lady Macbeth is evil, we must first

define what evil is. A textbook definition would link the word evil to

ones such as sin, greed, cruelty, and corruption. An act of cruelty

would be to harm another person or animal for the sadistic pleasure of

seeing pain and blood. An evil person would be a person with a lack of

morals or a desire for what someone else has and commits an action

such as murder to gain fulfil this desire. At the beginning of the

play we see Lady Macbeth take control and mastermind the murder of

King Duncan. As soon as she receives Macbeth's letter her first

thoughts are to kill Duncan to influence Macbeth's rise to king.

However, by the end of the play her guilt gains on and her drives her

insane, ultimately leading to her own death by committing suicide.

Many People tend to lean towards evil tendencies as in many cases as

crime does pay, and good people will lose out. This makes an evil

person quite persuasive, as they would be able to offer larger prizes.

Lady Macbeth uses these grand prizes to persuade Macbeth to kill

Duncan as she realizes that he would not do it by himself:

"Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' th' milk of human

kindness To catch the nearest way."

This shows the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. But you

could also say that Macbeth sent the letter to Lady Macbeth knowing

that she would take some form of action to persuade him, as the first

thing he thought of was to kill the King.

In reaction to Macbeth's letter, Lady Macbeth renounces all the soft,

human parts of her own nature. In a play so full of supernatural

events, we can take her literally when she says:

"...Spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts..." to "Stop up th' access

and passage to remorse / That no compunctious visitings of nature /

Shake my fell purpose.