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Lady macbeths descent into madness
Lady macbeths descent into madness
Lady macbeths descent into madness
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O Horror, horror, horror, The sun is strangled by the night, as day is too weak and night too strong. Darkness glooms over the earth when it’s meant to be light. You can hear the cries of grief, strange screams of deaths ushering in a woeful new age. I even dream now of the weird women, I see those things offering sacrifices to the goddess Hectate, and no Merciful power is keeping away the nightmares that plague me when I rest. He is king, the thane of Cawdor, and the thane of Glamis, he is everything the weird women promised, even though it was my family damned to that fate. But the witches told the truth about him, then maybe it is true what they said about me. But no! I refuse retaliate, because the prophecy, shined a future of prosperity, …show more content…
It was their poisonous words and foul phrases behind my partners sin. Macbeth! My own friend whose veins are filled with blue blood. How could he give in when I did not? Is he weaker than the man I once knew? Did a shivering canine unburden him with it’s infectious jaws? Or has he been hiding under the skirts of “noble Thane of Cawdor?” Has Cawdor been wrapped by the new Macbeth who was birthed by the foul words of the weird women and a slave to their fatal ideas? I guess it our closest relatives to most likely to murder us while we sleep. Such betrayal! Here I see the face of whom I once trusted, whom I shared my sorrows and my guilt. My brother who has succumbed to the cry of his mistress who is more deadly than Lady Macbeth – his mistress “lust for power”. I fear Macbeth has ruined years of glory to satisfy his pestilent ambition and to fulfil a prophecy that will damn his soul. Macbeth! What has my dear friend done, that I can feel the knife slice the base of my skull. Has he poisoned lives with his blade that has driven to the death of our friendship? Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! For I see his true self now with my own eyes. I’m putting myself in God’s hands now because the Thane of Glamis, “noble Thane of Glamis”, - who will not be forgiven in death, is
Power can transform even the most loyal of men. In Shakespeare’s gloomy and morbid Macbeth, nothing is as it seems. Even the most loyal characters are duplicitous in their nature, exemplified by Macbeth. The greatest Scottish warrior becomes power hungry in his quest to re-kindle his relationship with his wife, Lady Macbeth, and is thrown over the edge when he is not appointed the Prince of Cumberland, an honor he feels he deserves. This same hunger for power ultimately destroys Macbeth, leading him to betray all those he loves, including king Duncan, his friend Banquo, and his wife.
Macbeth, a play written by William Shakespeare, portrays Macbeth as a kinsman, subject and trusted friend to King Duncan I of Scotland. A trusted friend, that is, until Macbeth has a chance encounter with the “three witches” (Shakespeare) or the “Weird Sisters”. The witches predict that Macbeth will become the next King and that his fellow companion, Banquo, will be the father of a line of kings. A change comes over Macbeth after his meeting; he is no longer content to be a follower of the King, he will “be” King at any cost. After killing the King and his friend Banquo, losing his wife to madness and ordering the execution of many, Macbeth is killed in much the same fashion as he has killed. But does this really reflect the real King MacBeth of Scotland? While examining the characteristics and actions of the two Macbeths and decide if Shakespeare’s writing was historically sound or was it just “double, double, toil and trouble” (4.1.22-26) playing with MacBeth’s character.
First came the pride, an overwhelming sense of achievement, an accomplishment due to great ambition, but slowly and enduringly surged a world of guilt and confusion, the conscience which I once thought diminished, began to grow, soon defeating the title and its rewards. Slowly the unforgotten memories from that merciless night overcame me and I succumbed to the incessant and horrific images, the bloody dagger, a lifeless corpse. I wash, I scrub, I tear at the flesh on my hands, trying desperately to cleanse myself of the blood. But the filthy witness remains, stained, never to be removed.
Hail to thee, thane Cawdor! All hail to Macbeth! That shalt be king hereafter. feed straight into his desire for advancement. At this point in the play he is the newly appointed thane of Glamis but assumes that the thane of Cawdor still lives.
Macbeth is growing more and more delirious and wants to get out of the murders. When attending the gathering, he tells guests that "[his] dull brain [is] wrought with forgotten things" (I.iii.166-167). He is slowly allowing himself to be eaten alive by such guilt that he even admits it to his party attendants. Macbeth goes through with the slaying of Duncan. His wife tells him to look innocent and to "carry [the daggers] and smear the sleepy grooms with blood" (II.ii.63-64).
Over the last six months we have seen Macbeth degrade from a fearless and heroic warrior to a murderer, a conscious villain who felt extreme guilt after killing his King out of pure greed and ambition. His servant, as testified, overheard Macbeth express his guilt to his wife on the night of the murder: “I am afraid to think what I have done; Look on ‘t again I dare not.” Following his crowning at Scone, King Macbeth hired three assassins to murder his long-time friend Banquo, in order to protect his crown. It was after the murder of Banquo that Macbeth then turned into an unmerciful, non-repentant tyrant. This man, once heralded as a hero, became the bane of Scotland and his people.
Throughout the play Macbeth allows his pride to interfere with his judgment and succumbs to the witches’ prophecy, leading to his tragic downfall. “Macbeth orders a slaughter of innocents in a vain and futile attempt to preserve kingships threatened by prophecies” (Hassel). He murders King Duncan, his good friend, in order to secure his fate as king. Although Macbeth knows the difference between right and wrong, he is a victim of his tragic flaw: his ambition. His tragic flaw repeatedly leads him to deceit and murder.
Previously to the murder of King Duncan, Macbeth lived as a loyal, and honorable man. He never thought of assassinating his beloved King. It was only when the witches
This leads me to the conclusion that the tragedies of Macbeth were not at all Macbeth's fault. His only fault was his gullibility and innocence, which was targeted and abused by the real source of evil, his wife.
prospect of you being king was so great that I lost touch with reason. When the
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, first published in 1606, is an endearing tale outlining the dangers of unchecked ambition and moral betrayal. In the subsequent centuries after first being performed, Macbeth's critics have been divided upon whether Macbeth himself was irrevocably evil, or if he was guided by the manipulation and actions of the women in the play to his ultimate demise. Although Lady Macbeth and the witches were influential with their provocations in the opening acts, it is ultimately Macbeth’s inherent immorality and his vaulting ambition, that resulted in the tragic downfall. It was Macbeth’s desire for power that abolished his loyalty and trustworthiness and led him down a path of murder. It is evident through his actions and words throughout the play as to how he led himself through a path of betrayal leading to his inescapable demise.
Macbeth’s story highlights the inherent goodness found in all of us, but also the evil that lurks within us, unnourished. Although there is no redemption for Macbeth’s evil sins, he finally comes to acknowledge his crimes and thus can provoke pity in the eyes of the audience. Macbeth’s psychological journey from a courageous general to a “ dead butcher” (5.9.41) is one that truly merits to be called a tragedy.
Lady Macbeth’s disturbing speech to herself while sleepwalking illustrates her clear downward spiral after committing the murders, demonstrating that the intense personal guilt she carries shows her to possess a conscious, and ultimately shows that she is the lesser evil between she and Macbeth. In this passage, Lady Macbeth is found by the doctor and her servant wandering around, visibly awake, but mentally asleep. The doctor is told to examine her, and watch her exhibit this strange action, where she can be seen sleepwalking and talking to herself. Lady Macbeth proceeds to speak panickedly about the murders committed, scrubbing her hands and, referring to the metaphorical blood, “Out, damned spot!
Shakespeare’s Macbeth: Exploring Ambition Macbeth is a tragedy-drama from Shakespeare that is perceived as consuming ambition. Essentially, the word ambition is defined as a strong desire to achieve something, achieved through hard work. In Macbeth, Shakespeare demonstrates powerful ambition in the characters of the drama by giving them an intense desire for power. Furthermore, their unchecked ambition would lead to more chaos, tension, and hamartia throughout the plots in the story.
Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, is now troubled by overwhelming guilt and madness, manifested in her sleepwalking and obsessive hand-washing. When the doctor observes her muttering, “Here's the smell of blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. O, O, O!” (5.1.53-55), it becomes apparent that her once unstoppable strength and ambition have completely crumbled.