What events demonstrate how MAcbeth is a tragic hero?

[AnGCaV]

I have to write a paper and I was just wondering if anyone could help. I don't know whether they would be the witches prophecies, how Lady Macbeth influenced and manipulated Macbeth's judgment, and Macbeth's
long time ambition which drove his desire to be king. That is what I got but i'm not sure if i'm headed in the wrong direction. Any one have ne suggestions?

[IWilKikU]

Argh!!! I thought you just called Macbeth "A tragic Hero"!!!! Dont ever call the tyrant a hero!!! A tragic hero is a HERO with a fatal flaw that will inevitably bring about his downfall. Macbeth doesn't do a single heroic thing in the entire play. He's only a hero while being described to Duncan in Act I scene II:

For Brave Macbeth, well he deserves that name
Distaining fortune with his brandished steel which smoked with bloody execution
Like valors minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave;
Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him
Till he unseamed him, from the nave to the chops
And fixed his head upon our battlements.

This passage and a couple others like it are the only good things said about Macbeth in the whole play. And in drama how do you analyze a character? By what is said about him by himself and others. If you can find anything else heroic about Macbeth, other than his performance in the battle against Norway, than you've got PhD material buzzing around in your head.

Now, if you want to know what drove Macbeth to murder than it was quite simply, fate. Before the witches even see Macbeth, his first lines echo thiers,

Fair is fowl, and Fowl is fair

So fowl and fair a day I have not seen

So you can see that he is already under their spell of twisted fate. You can see that he is thinking about murder in Act I scene IV when he says,

The prince of Cumberland!
That is a step on which I must fall down
Or else o'rleap, for in my way it lies.

Sure he goes back and forth about wether or not to kill Duncan, and sure his wife and his ambition help motivate him, but it all comes down to the fact that the witches are mearly interpreters of fate. They tell the characters WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN, they dont give people suggestions, and they dont cause anything to happen themselves. They are mearly the harbingers of fate.

[GoldenTears]

I beg to differ with the above comment.

Macbeth is a tragic hero and the beginning praise by Duncan about his military skills proves it. Also, in regard to the witches, they merely predict what will happen, but never are we given the impression that the witches have actually INFLUENCED Macbeth to do anything. So yes, the methods and ideas are from his own mind, but what do we see throughout Macbeth?

We see a man, once noble and honorable, praised by the king, a cousin of him as well, suddenly sell his humanity to ambition.

...I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other.

He knows what he's doing and he's in full control, but we see the struggle in his eloquent poetry. We see the conflict between his moral self and his ambition. Ambition wins out, and Macbeth embraces immorality.

Once he gets what he wants, the crown, he realizes he is not happy. He can't trust anyone, and no one will trust him. His wife is mad, and a lot of people are...well, dead. This is his reversal of fortune.

Macbeth soon loses his vigor in the speech in Act V Scene V. (too lazy to quote it. *sweatdrop*) where he speaks of how futile Life is.

Macbeth is a tragic hero through and through. However his actions cause resentment amongst the audience, so instead of feeling sorrow at his demise as we would for Othello, Hamlet, or King Lear, we feel relief that such a tyrant is dead. But in truth, there was a story, there was a human inside this tyrant. He is literary proof as to the dangers of ambition.

That's a tragedy.

[aiks]

Originally posted by IWilKikU
Argh!!! I thought you just called Macbeth "A tragic Hero"!!!! Dont ever call the tyrant a hero!!!

I think Macbeth still is a tragic hero. Despite his being bad all that, besides as you well pointed out:

Now, if you want to know what drove Macbeth to murder than it was quite simply, fate.

He cannot fight fate, fate is what makes it all tragic as in Greek tragedies.

[GoldenTears]

Exactly, as I said before, the whole tragedy is the fact that he was in sane mind and VOLUNTARILY chose his actions.

Very tragic.

[Sindhu]

Macbeth is most certainly a tragic hero . The fact that he was a tyrant does not make him any less of a Tragic hero at least in the literary sense of the term. From Greek tragedy onwards, the heroic figures have often been tyrants in the political sense. But they were more than just tyrants- and that is where the element of tragic hero comes in. Macbeth is not a born tyrant- he becomes one in the course of the play and we see the process of disintegration taking place before our eyes- that is tragedy. He is aware of what is happening to him, that his tragic flaw is ambition and he cannot stop himself- he has to go on hating himself all the while. That, I think meets the requirements for tragic hero quite well. If he could change things, then of course he would be different, not a tyrant, but then he would not be Macbeth either- and it is because it is Macbeth who has potential for something so different who winds up being a hated tyrent that the play is a tragedy and the protagonist a tragic hero.

[IWilKikU]

I guess I always thought of tragic heroes as actually heroes, protagonists who are the victims of tragedy. I would have classified Macbeth as a tragic villian. But I guess in a true tragedy everyone is the victim. So I see your point.

[MondayFairchild]

I nearly got a perfect on my paper! [Er, I'm not the one who started this thread but I had to write about Macbeth as a tragic hero some time ago too.] This thread was soooo helpful!!

You guys rock.