Nihilism In Macbeth

Macbeth by William Shakespeare is a book taken place in the early 17th century about an honorable Scottish knight that succumbs to the scourge of three sister witches. The main character, Macbeth begins as an honest and trustworthy man, yet as the story goes on he transforms into a malevolent tyrant with no care for anyone, “and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death” (V,v,25). Throughout the story Macbeth loses all humankind and turns into a nihilist.

There is another side to this. The counterargument is that Macbeth was never malevolent and that he was simply under a curse from the witches. This isn’t right because, in spite of the fact that Macbeth was put under an evil spell, he killed people that he didn’t need to,

These witches give them visions of the future, and what they will become. Banquo says, “That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth, And yet are don’t?” (I, III, 43-44). The three witches tell Macbeth that he will be king amid this encounter with them, he will have a couple more encounters with these witches later on. Macbeth begins to think that what these witches say must be valid since he believes that he should proceed with killing the king. Macbeth murders the king during the night while he is sleeping in his home. Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars Revenge of the Sith can relate to Macbeth. This occurs when an execution order was given and all of the clones turned against Skywalker as well as the rest of the Jedi’s, “ANAKIN looks back at them with a stern expression on his face and ignites his light saber” (Star Wars Revenge of the Sith). To avoid problems, Anakin killed several kids so that there wouldn’t be any Jedi to kill them in the future. Macbeth relates to this because in order to prevent things from ruining them later on, they had to do terrible things. After Macbeth murders Duncan, he is overpowered with guilt, not long after he kills the drunk guards that should have protected the king. As the witches said, Macbeth would become the king, so Macbeth did everything to ensure that it would