Tyrant or Tragic Hero?

[Kendall]

What is your opinion on Macbeth's behaviour?
Which do you believe he really is (tyrant or tragic hero)?
Does Macbeth have too much hamartia?


*The finest tragedy is complex rather than simple
*Tragedy is a "representation of terrible and piteous events"

This is for no specific reason, perhaps just a discussion.

[Sindhu]

Macbeth is definitely a tragic hero in my opinion. If he was a mere tyrant, we would feel only relief when he is finally deposed. My reactions to his fall are much more complex. The epitaph "this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen" chills me when I compare the personalitythey evoke with the "Brave Macbeth" we meet at the beginning of the play. There is such a waste of potential, which to me is what makes the tragedy. Macbeth is brave, imaginative, determined, caring and sensitive at the beginning and then he descends by harrowing stages to the point of no return, no, worse because it is a point from which it is not worth returning. And yet, when life has cesed to have any meaning at all, he still dies fighting- a gesture all the more poignant for its futility.
As to Hamartia, I don't think Macbeth's tragic flaw" was his ambition exactly, it was more his imagination. The kind of visionary imagination that does not allow you to let go of an idea once it has entered your brain, makes you do things you hate yourself for to acheive that vision and then when once you've got it ensures that you shall "sleep no more." If Macbeth had been merely ambitious, he would have killed Duncan, possibly murdered the prices and retained the throne as well as eating hearty suppers untroubled by ghostly spectres. But his Hamartia is that "Brave Macbeth", the rough and ready soldier is also a visionary and visionaries are usually allowed only two choices - that between being a noble martyr or a tragic hero. Macbeth falls into the latter category.

[Kendall]

If he was a mere tyrant, we would feel only relief when he is finally deposed. There is such a waste of potential, which to me is what makes the tragedy. Macbeth is brave, imaginative, determined, caring and sensitive at the beginning and then he descends by harrowing stages to the point of no return, no, worse because it is a point from which it is not worth returning. And yet, when life has cesed to have any meaning at all, he still dies fighting- a gesture all the more poignant for its futility.


Yes! This is good, I like this. Thanks for replying.

[AbdoRinbo]

Whose mouth is that, Kendall?

[Kendall]

Angelina Jolie, of course! Now answer my question! 8)