Macbeth Essay - 1706 Words

Ayomide Fakuade Mrs. Corradi ENG 3UE-01 Tuesday, May 19th, 2015 The Demise of Noble Macbeth Credited as one of William Shakespeare’s bloodiest and darkest works, The Tragedy of Macbeth is an emotionally tense, gripping play about loyalty, betrayal and ambition. Blinded by his vaulting ambition and encouraged by his wife, Macbeth attempted to remove the obstacles preventing him from being king; these obstacles happened to be other characters in the play. Macbeth accepted the prophecies of witches as a guide for what would be, and misjudged what they told him. In the end, his overconfidence led him to his death as he believed that he could not be harmed, when he was just a mortal man. Over the course of Macbeth, one can clearly see the†¦show more content†¦A tragic hero is a literary character who makes a judgment error that inevitably leads to his or her own destruction. According to Aristotle, a tragic hero must have a flaw (hamartia) that leads him or her to their down fall. The character must show excessive pride (hubris), suffe r a reversal of fortune (peripeteia) and realize that the fortune reversal was because of his/her error in judgement. The character’s fate must also be greater than deserved. In his first soliloquy, Macbeth reveals his hamartia to be his vaulting ambition; his ambition is pictured as a horseback rider mounting his saddle but overleaps and falls on the others side of the horse. Macbeth is intrigued by the allure of becoming King of Scotland but is unwilling to take the necessary steps in order to do so. Macbeth’s first soliloquy reveals him to be an upright, reasonable man that can be swayed by emotion as we see him weighing the pros and cons of killing Duncan; when Macbeth imagines the murder, he does not focus on how much he wants to be king, but how sorry everyone will be when it becomes known that Duncan has been murdered. Macbeth knows that his ambition is not a good reason to kill Duncan and he has listed all of the reasons not to but when he says, â€Å"I have n o spur/ To prick the sides of my intent, but only/ Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself/ And falls on the other† (1.7 25-28) it is suggested that he will go along with his wife’s plan and kill Duncan, giving in to his vaultingShow MoreRelatedMacbeth Essays : Macbeth 1064 Words   |  5 PagesMacbeth Analytical Essay In life, there are two types of people: those who do the right thing and those who don’t. In the play Macbeth, by Shakespeare, the main character Macbeth is given a prophecy by three witches that says he will become king; however, there is no descending line of kings of his own blood. 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