Considering Macbeth as a Tragic Hero

Considering Macbeth as a Tragic Hero

In the play "Macbeth", Macbeth is known as "brave Macbeth" but the end

of the play knows him as "this dead butcher". In the beginning he was

a brave heroic warrior and everyone admired him. He had many noble

qualities, but he had one fatal flaw, which was "ambition". Although

you may think that ambition is a good quality, it is only good when

you are ambitious for something good but not something terribly evil.

Ambition is what caused Macbeth to become an evil person. His ambition

was to become Thane of Cawdor. In the end he was made King of Scotland

and in order for him to do this he had to kill his friend Duncan. This

just shows how over ambitious Macbeth was and how determined he was

that he would even go as far as killing his friend to achieve his goal

as being King of Scotland. The reason why be became so incredibly

ambitious was because the witches said that he could become King if he

wanted and his wife, Lady Macbeth, just kept on encouraging him and

there was no one else there to hold him back. In the end he did

actually kill Duncan, although he was very hesitant about it. He was a

potentially heroic person until the witches influenced him and made

him over ambitious which made him commit the dreadful deed of killing

Duncan.

"For brave Macbeth - well he deserves that name"………. well that's what

everybody thought at the beginning of the play anyway. Macbeth had

many good, positive qualities about him. In fact he had many more good

qualities than bad. At the start of the play, there was a battle and

the Captain thought how brave and courageous Macbeth was. Macbeth and

Macduff fought in the play. Macbeth said, "Lay on Macduff, and damned

be him that first cries, hold enough". This just shows how courageous

and fearless Macbeth actually was.

In battle, Macbeth was known to be a great swordsman and very skilled

because the Captain said, "Like Valour's minion carved out his passage