The Importance Of Courage In Macbeth

Briona Bowyer

AP Lang. & Comp.

Ms. Schaner

2nd Hour

10 Mar. 2016

It Can Make A Person or Break A Person

The world consists of people who have two opposite traits. Half of the population is brave, fearless, and daring. The other half is wimpy, fearful, and pusillanimous. All of these traits are synonyms and antonyms of one definition: courage. Courage is when someone has the inspiration to be mentally strong; or it is when someone has the willpower to do things that he/she would not normally do. Usually society identifies courage as a positive action leading to a positive outcome, but that is not always the case.

In Utopia, Sir Thomas More wrote a letter notifying the people of the type of ruler they deserve as a king and how he should rule.

In the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, a man by the name of Macbeth decimated an enemy in battle; by doing so, Macbeth earned the title of a hero. With the motivation from three nefarious witches and his wife, Macbeth committed a tragedy, which caused him to become a tragic hero. In Act I, Scene 2, the captain proudly informs the king, “But all’s too weak; for brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name), disdaining fortune, With his brandished steel, which smoked with bloody execution, like Valor’s minion, carved out his passage till he faced the slave; which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, till he unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops, and fixed his head upon our battlements” (Shakespeare 9). The captain is informing the king of what Macbeth has just done; Macbeth has just saved the kingdom from its arch enemy by splitting him open from the navel to the jawbone and then stapling his head to the castle wall. Macbeth had the courage to slaughter the enemy. This is one positive act of courage that leads to one positive outcome, but this one positive act leads to multiple negative acts of courage. Soon after Macbeth wins his title of a hero, he works up the courage to commit a tragedy. In act II, scene 2, Macbeth cries out, “Whose hands are these? Ha! They’re plucking out my eyes. Will all the water in the ocean

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Queen Elizabeth I. “Speech Before the Spanish Armada Invasion.” McDougal Littell Literature: British Literature. Evanston: McDougal Littell, 2008. 440. Print.

Shakespeare,William. Macbeth. New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 1992.