Outline Introduction: * Betrayal and deception play a big role in the play Macbeth, it tells us that you never know who you can trust or not. * The Three Witches, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth show us how someone that you once could trust, turns into someone you don’t recognize in a second. . First Main Point: The Witches * display evil power * change Macbeth into an evil man * not trusted Second Main Point: Macbeth * he betrays Duncan * betrays Banquo * became a murderer Third Main Point: Lady Macbeth * plans to kill Duncan to take over the throne for Macbeth * talking in her sleep, expressing the murder * deceives her king Conclusion: * good turns to evil, trust turn to betrayal
Macbeth desire to be king causes him to believe the witches for their prophesies have come true before. He is unable to see the witches as the most dangerous characters in the play. Without the witches playing upon Macbeth’s ambitions, it is doubtful that Macbeth would have committed the murders. The witches play the part of the instigators, and help Macbeth to continue his acts of violence. Even though they are able to see that his acts will lead him to his downfall, they continue to let him kill others.
There is none but he whose being I do fear. From this soliloquy, it’s obvious that Macbeth is once again encompassed by the extreme terror that Banquo, his best friend may know about the truth of the deed. The fear of unsecured throne terrifies Macbeth and causes him to send murderers to perform the assassination of Banquo. Later on, the unexpected escape of Fleance triggers the ideas of visiting witches once more to seek his fate. After Macbeth knows the fact that he should be aware of Mcduff, he sends orders immediately to commence a full murder of Mcduff’s family.
The truth is that many of these decisions that Macbeth makes or follows is based on what the witches told him. One example of this is when Lady Macbeth convinces him to kill Duncan in order to become king. She specifically says, “Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be / What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature / … / That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, / and chastise with the valor of my tongue” (1.5.16-17, 27-28). In this quote Lady Macbeth is thinking about the witches prophecy and how she can make it come true.
Some theories suggest that Macbeth was influenced by the supernatural but some believe that Macbeth himself was responsible for his actions and inevitable downfall. Macbeth ignores the voice of his own psyche and let himself carried away by the predictions of the witches. He is aware that he is going to commit a murder, but nevertheless he lets himself mislead by the three weird sisters and his own wife Lady Macbeth. The ghost and the apparitions also influenced Macbeth a lot. We say
Macbeth: Justice or Injustice Murder, deceit, and immorality are not a rare occurrence in the story of Macbeth; in fact they are the basis of the story. The three witches play with Macbeth’s mind and make him thirst for the throne, Lady Macbeth encourages her husband to murder King Duncan, and says Macbeth is a coward for his hesitation, to trick him into killing the King. And Macbeth not only murders King Duncan, but also Banquo, the Macduff family, and attempts to kill Fleance, son of Banquo. The question remains; is justice served where justice is due in this story? A lust for power already existed in Macbeth, but it was his encounter with the three witches on his return from battle that triggered his thirst for the throne, and subsequently the deaths of many, Macbeth among the deceased.
During the play Macbeth was introduce to the ideas of murder and betrayal by Lady Macbeth. She pressured him into doing things he would have never imagined doing. Macbeth witnessed a supernatural event when he saw Banqo ghost at the dinner. Lady Macbeth also witnessed a supernatural event when she could not wash off King Duncan’s blood. The Mariner showed a supernatural event when he watched the suffer.
Macbeth further condones this in his action to the witches’ prophecy that he will become king. Once made Thane of Cawdor, Macbeth realizes the truth in the witches’ predictions, and immediately begins to contemplate the other part of their prophecy. “My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,” (Act 1, sc. 3, line 151-152) he thinks, bringing murder to the front of his mind almost as soon as the witches are proven correct. Later in the play, Macbeth’s yearning for power, encouraged by the weird sisters, convinces him to kill the king and assume the throne.
Near the end of the play she admits to her crimes, further solidifying her guilt. Still, however guilty she may be, Lady Macbeth’s greatest skill lies in her aptitude for deception and cunning. During Macbeth, Lady Macbeth forces her husband to do her bidding and commit vile murders using a variety of methods and means. Chief amongst her tools are the arts of persuasion and deception, both of which she teaches to Macbeth. As she receives a letter from her husband, she says, “...I may pour my spirits into thine ear and chastise with the valour of my tongue all that impedes thee from the golden round”(I v 25-26), proving that she plans to convince Macbeth to remove all that impedes him from the crown, clearing the way for her to be queen.
In order to make amends she orders the witches to create more spells to give Macbeth overconfidence as you all know security is mortals chiefest enemy (Act 3 scene 5). Another supernatural element that Shakespeare uses in the play represents Macbeths guilt and beginning of his madness is through the floating daggers in Act 2, which occur in Macbeths own home whilst King Duncan was guest. Before Macbeth commits the murder of King Duncan, he sees a bloody dragger that leads him to Duncans room. Macbeth questions if the dagger is real or a dagger of the mind, a false creation (Act 2 scene 1), in other words it is a hallucination. This dagger makes it so Macbeth cannot resist killing Duncan.