The Supernatural Forces in Macbeth by Shakespeare

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Regardless of your position on supernatural events in our world, you have to acknowledge the supernatural forces at play in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In our society, we hear the occasional ghost stories or urban legends, hinting at an entanglement between our world and one more supernatural. However, when you look into the world of Macbeth, you are thrown into a world of witches, ghosts, and prophecies, all of which have very real influence upon their world. These supernatural forces pull the strings, manipulating the natural world for their liking, or benefit. This is seen in the witch’s manipulation of Macbeth, which drives the main plot of the play. Macbeth is manipulated by supernatural forces into preforming acts that went against his, and the world’s nature, causing his humanity to wither away and making him just as unnatural as his manipulators. Humanity is made up of what comes naturally to all humans: love, emotions, relationships, and ambition. The supernatural forces in the play cause these characteristics (his humanity) to diminish. Specifically his capacity to love is erased, as seen with his relationship with Lady Macbeth, and his natural ambition is replaced with an unnatural sense of destined entitlement, which leads him on his crimson-stained rise to power.
In act four, scene 1, Macbeth approaches the witches and asks them for help. In doing so he surrenders his ability to make decisions for himself. With the trust in the witches that has been solidified within him by the accuracy of their previous prophecies, he gave no second thought to the witches’ suggestion that he should kill Duncan. Because Macbeth attributes all of his successes so far, to the witches, he would have blindly followed any suggestions given by t...

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...ion When carrying out the murder this process hasn’t completed yet, and that is the cause for his guilt after he commits the crime. A Macbeth, who was never manipulated, would never have had the thought of killing Duncan, cross his mind, much less have the capacity to carry out the act.
The witches’ manipulation of Macbeth causes his humanity to diminish, replacing his capacity of love, with a capacity to hate, and his ambition with entitlement. Macbeth had been manipulated by supernatural forces into preforming acts that went against his, and the world’s nature, causing his humanity to wither away and making him just as unnatural as his manipulators. Without this intervention the balance of the natural world never would have been skewed, and Macbeth’s rise to, and fall from glory never would have occurred, leaving us without one of the greatest texts of all time.

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