Macbeth Analysis

we finished Macbeth by reading the book online and the movie in the class. I think Macbeth is the most interesting character to me in the play, thus I want going to analyze Macbeth in this blog post.

A lot of people consider Macbeth is one of the most famous tragedies in Shakespeare’s work. However, I did not have a really sad feeling after I got the main idea of this play. At the beginning, Macbeth was a brave man, a hero fight for his king. But what factor leads to the death of Macbeth, what makes him keep doing the cruel things and could never come back?

In my view, first, it is because of his enormous ambition. It is absolutely right for a warrior to have ambition. It is definitely true that almost every great emperor in the history was ambitions. However, in this play Macbeth did not get what he wanted from his ambition. Why Macbeth has such a huge ambition? As we know, in the Act 1, Scene 1, Macbeth met the three witches on the way back to the country. The three witches predicted that Macbeth would be the Thane of Cawdor, and then the king of Scotland. Since the first prediction came true a little time after the three witches left, Macbeth paid attention to what they said and believed he would be the king later. The words witches told him became the catalyzer, activated the dark character deep in Macbeth’s heart, and made him get crazy to pursue the kingship. Therefore, he killed Duncan, although he knew Duncan was a good king.

Secondly, through the book, we can tell that Macbeth did not want to kill the king when his wife told him to do. Thus the instigation from his wife is also a main factor. I consider Macbeth had conscience when he and his wife started to plan to kill the king. As shown in the book, Macbeth was hesitated and scared. However, his wife said “To be the same in thine own act and valour, 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?”(Act 1, Scene5). I think these words that lady Macbeth said strongly influenced Macbeth behavior. It is a common sense that a man does not want to be looked down on by the other. Thus, lady Macbeth’s instigation increased Macbeth’s motivation of killing the king and get the kingship.

If we say Macbeth felt nervous or anxious of killing Duncan, his action of killing Banquo was cruel and without any guilty feeling. The reason why Macbeth killed Banquo was that he felt Bnaquo might be the future problem to him. He became so arrogant and ruthless after being the king. He trusted the witches too much, and that made a lot of nobles leave the country.

Although Macbeth is a tragedy, a lot of people think that the death of Macbeth is resulted by himself. This play not only presents the tragedy of Macbeth, but also the tragedy of that time.

That is my understand to Macbeth.