Because of this, he decides he must kill Banquo, so that there will be no heir. “Macbeth plots the murder of Banquo, out of jealousy and insecurity.” (Hompi 1) This is obviously an absurd idea, and prior to Macbeth’s murder of King Duncan he never would have considered it as a solution. Shakespeare uses this to show how power corrupts even the best of people. It is obvious that this is still a problem in society today, as people start off with good intentions but slowly get sidetracked. Before long, their objectives have changed completely.
Change of Heart Shakespeare’s Macbeth really helped me understand the severity that people can change under certain circumstances. The main character, Macbeth, begins as a very respectable and moral person, but by the end of the story he has become a murderous tyrant. It’s hard to tell if Macbeth would have had the same fate if he had never heard the prediction of his future from the three witches. If Macbeth had never heard what the witches had to say, would he have still become king? Or would he have never found the courage to murder for his own personal gain?
Revenge is a harmful action that many people never consider the full outcome of what their actions might bring. In William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, it can be seen that Polonius deserves some punishment for his interference with Hamlet and his snooping but certainly not the repercussion of death. Additionally, Ophelia is no more innocent than her father, as she is killed by her own madness. Finally, Laertes, Polonius’s son, is rushed back to Denmark to avenge his father’s death, only to result in his own demise. Nonetheless, the main plot following is Prince Hamlet’s attempt to avenge his father’s murder.
“You do unbend your noble strength, to think / So brainsickly of things.” She comments on how he has become more worried and thinks feverishly of things. Macbeth says that he would “go no more / [he] is afraid of what [he[ has done” indicating his fear of his own actions and the following consequences. After being swayed by his wife, Macbeth seems to think rather illogically and impulsively. He becomes more ‘evil’ as he pursues the goal of being King at the expense of all other considerations. Once he was crowned King, he became paranoid and ceased trusting anyone which had led him to killing several other lives.
When he killed Banquo he only committed homicide. I think he felt different feeling towards killing both of them because the king was his cousin and Banquo was his bestfriend, although he physically didn’t kill Banquo because he didn’t want to get his hands dirty and wanted to be free of suspicion, shows how much of a coward Macbeth is. I think the only reason Banquo’s murder was worse than King Duncan was that because he targeted Banquo and his Fleance for nothing, also he was his best friend therefore he had become totally ruthless and to him life is now
Macbeth is not merely portrayed as a butcher because at the beginning of the play he has a motive for killing King Duncan, a butcher would kill someone without reason. A butcher can be seen as someone who is heartless and has no self control, but Macbeth does not fit into these conventions as he is in love with Lady Macbeth and he tries to persuade himself not to kill the King, he is just easily influenced by others. Macbeth has reasons for his actions rather than just killing someone for the sake of it, so therefore i would argue that he is not seen as a butcher. His ‘vaulting ambition’ is what drove Macbeth to kill the King; he wanted more than he already had. Macbeth can’t be fully blamed for all of the murders as he didn’t personally commit the crimes he got other people to do them for him.
Although Macbeth desires to be King he still has his doubts about the murder. Shakespeare shows that Lady Macbeth serves as a foil to Macbeth because her static character shows strong and evil strategies that bring out Macbeths cowardly actions and apprehensive conscience for becoming King, making Macbeth look as if he is weak. Macbeth is seen as a very brave and determined character at the beginning of the play after winning the battle at Norway. Even though Macbeth is seen to be a positive role model, he is naïve and easily fooled into doing things his original character would not intend on doing. In the play Macbeth is persuaded by Lady Macbeth to kill Duncan in order to get the “ornament of life,” which would be taking the thrown.
Macbeth is more to be condemned than pitied, when faced with his heinous crimes. A single regicide would have been enough to denounce him beyond any hope of acquittal, yet it was not just one murder that so condemns him. Not only did Macbeth murder his king, but Young Siward, Macduff’s family and his own friend Banquo, in addition to the attempted murder of Banquo’s son Fleance. During the course of the play, his actions are inhumane and morally wrong, and while it can be argued that it was the influences of both Lady Macbeth and the Witches led to King Duncan’s murder at Macbeth’s hands, it was he who performed the act. It was his fatal flaw, ambition, that ultimately led to his downfall.
Outline. The written task is about “How could a text be read and interpreted differently by two different readers based on Act 5 Scene I of the play “Macbeth” by William Shakespeare”. This Scene shows the hallucinations Lady Macbeth has after influencing her husband Macbeth to kill the King, Duncan. This task corresponds to the part 4 of the course, which covers the detailed study of a text. I was interested in studying this because it caught my attention the way Lady Macbeth and her husband were punished for committing treason from Shakespeare point of view, but from a modern point of view we can read the scene differently.
Hamlet: Justice or Revenge In the era portrayed in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, justice is mostly carried out by oneself and not the court of law, and it is a thing of honor to avenge the death of a loved one. However, Hamlet’s quest for justice over his father’s murder does at some point turn into personal revenge, as he wants to have vengeance on his uncle in ways that become more personal. Hamlet loses track of the main reason for wanting his uncle dead and hatred grows for Claudius, his uncle, such that he wants to make sure that Claudius does not go to heaven when he dies. His uncontrollable emotions show when he kills Polonius and does not care about his actions. Hamlet even seems to have forgotten the main reason why he is avenging his father’s death.