Post_Mortem
12-13-2007, 11:30 PM
Do you think he is a tragic hero or an evil man?
I'm writing an essay on this currently for school. I seem to think Shakespeare wanted to portray Macbeth as a victim of his ambition. There are references of this in the play, comparing Macbeths ambition to a drunk man, specfically in the porter scene. This impares his judgement and scars his good nature. He reluctantly acts impusively.
Next I think his ambition took away his valiant nature and replaced it with fear. Aristotle lists the things that we fear and among them are people who share a secret with us lest they tell other people and also those who we have wronged in fear that they will seek revenge. The former is obviously Banquo who he kills, which is the point of no return in the play, but in the end of the play he achieves redemption by facing his fear and fighting the person who he wronged, Macduff. So basically his struggles are in his mind, which is why he is not glorfied by Malcolm at the end of the last act, unlike other Shakespeare plays like Julius Caesar where Brutus does wrong but is spoken highly of.
Finally his guilt proves he is not an evil tyrant. He does not act out of remorseless ambition, but rather regrets all of his bad deeds. His guilt is shown through his imagination and we can see that his ambition corrupts his poetic mind. I can't think of much else to say about this point. It's gonna be my worst paragraph.
So, your thoughts?
I'm writing an essay on this currently for school. I seem to think Shakespeare wanted to portray Macbeth as a victim of his ambition. There are references of this in the play, comparing Macbeths ambition to a drunk man, specfically in the porter scene. This impares his judgement and scars his good nature. He reluctantly acts impusively.
Next I think his ambition took away his valiant nature and replaced it with fear. Aristotle lists the things that we fear and among them are people who share a secret with us lest they tell other people and also those who we have wronged in fear that they will seek revenge. The former is obviously Banquo who he kills, which is the point of no return in the play, but in the end of the play he achieves redemption by facing his fear and fighting the person who he wronged, Macduff. So basically his struggles are in his mind, which is why he is not glorfied by Malcolm at the end of the last act, unlike other Shakespeare plays like Julius Caesar where Brutus does wrong but is spoken highly of.
Finally his guilt proves he is not an evil tyrant. He does not act out of remorseless ambition, but rather regrets all of his bad deeds. His guilt is shown through his imagination and we can see that his ambition corrupts his poetic mind. I can't think of much else to say about this point. It's gonna be my worst paragraph.
So, your thoughts?