Who Is Responsible For Macbeth's Downfall

The desire for power has the ability to impair the decisions of a typically secure individual and crumble the lives of people around him/her. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Lady Macbeth's hunger for power leads her to convince her husband to kill innocent people. This drive overall stems from her strong inner ambition. Each one of her character traits directly affect the choices that she makes, and those choices are sometimes harmful. Lady Macbeth's strong ambition, persuasiveness, and extreme guilt are responsible for her downfall.

From the beginning of the novel, Lady Macbeth's strongest character trait has been her ambition. Once she hears of Macbeth's prophecy to become king, her mind immediately turns to murder: “Glamis thou art, and Cawdor,

and shalt be / What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature; / It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness / To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, / Art not without ambition, but without / The illness should attend it” (1.5.15-20). In this quote, Lady Macbeth worries if Macbeth has what it takes to steal the crown. Macbeth may of some ambition, but not enough to do what needs to be done in order to take the throne. Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, has what some say is too much ambition. She would have no problem with murdering her beloved king for power. In fact, it is her idea to murder Duncan in the first place. This just shows how Lady Macbeth will do anything for power. One of the most heinous, yet powerful quotes from the play is when Lady Macbeth says, “I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums / And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you / Have done to this” (1.7.57-60). This shows Lady Macbeth's extreme ambition, as she describes that she would smash her baby's brains out to if she had sworn to the same way Macbeth had sworn to kill Duncan. This is the most surprising and character revealing quote in the book because it shows that Lady Macbeth would brutally murder her own baby for her own power. Lady Macbeth asked to be stipped of her femininity, came up with the idea of murdering the king, and was able to clean up after the murder without any guilt. All of these choices would not have been able to be made without her intense ambition. The drive for power becomes too much, when innocent people are being murdered left and right. The actions from Lady Macbeth's ambition, ends up being the causes for not only her own death, but Macbeth's too. She uses this aspiration for power to persuade Macbeth to go through with killing Duncan for the throne.
With Lady Macbeth's persuasiveness, she uses insults and threats to manipulate Macbeth into killing the king.

At first, Macbeth is reluctant to murdering his friend. Lady Macbeth responds to this by questioning Macbeth’s bravery and masculinity: “Art thou afeard / To be in the same in thine own act and valor / As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that / Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life / And live a coward in thine own esteem / Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would, ” / Like the poor cat i' the' adage?” (1.7.42-46). Lady Macbeth is calling Macbeth a coward, and comparing him to a poor cat in an old story. This is one of her techniques of manipulation; insults. Macbeth is then provoked by these words, and feels the need to go through with the murder. Lady Macbeth also threatens Macbeth in this scene, “And wakes it now, to look so green and pale / At what it did so freely? From this time / Such I account thy love”(1.7.37-39). Here, she tells Macbeth that think of their love as something that it not real because it is built off fear. This is her other technique of persuasion; threats. She threatens Macbeth to not value their love anymore because of how much of a coward he is, and how he does not stick with his feelings. The moment Lady Macbeth convinces Macbeth to kill Duncan, is the start of their downfall. However, Lady Macbeth's ambitious and manipulative character takes a complete turn once Duncan is dead, and the guilt settles

in.
With blood on her hands, Lady Macbeth is paranoid and overcome by guilt.

This is shown in the sleepwalking scene, “Wash your hands. Put on your nightgown. / Look not so pale.—I tell you yet again, / Banquo’s buried; he cannot come out on's grave” (5.1.43-45). Lady Macbeth is restless over fear, guilt and paranoia. This causes her to sleepwalk at night while speaking of her worries. In this scene, Lady Macbeth reassures herself that no matter how guilty she feels, Banquo will not come back, and that she should just look normal and go to bed. This shows regret in Lady Macbeth. If she had not been so desperate for the throne, to the point where she helped kill innocent people, she would not have to feel this extreme guilt. So much guilt, that she chose to kill

herself.
Lady Macbeth is one of the most crucial characters to the Macbeth. Without her significant decisions, Lady Macbeth and her husband would not have suffered their downfalls. These choices were made because of Lady Macbeth's prominent character traits: ambition, persuasiveness, and guilt. Everyone's choices in the real world, all relate back to their own personality, just like Lady Macbeth's did.