Macbeths Ambition

Macbeths oppositionMacbeth goes through a steadily detrimental transformation in Shakespeares play Macbeth. Macbeth goes from being a conscientious, compassionate, lucid and caring valet in the rootage of the play and becoming logical, compassionate, caring, and conscientious man in the beginning of the play and becoming a cruel and insensitive excuse of a human being. His change in behavior from compassionate to insensitive and logical to illogical develops slowly, but surely. Macbeth shows that he is capable at his peak in being compassionate and logical, which squeeze out be seen while he contemplates killing Dun tin can and in his last-place decision on the matter. Later, we see evidence of a descent from this when he is deciding to kill Banquo his motives change, and he ploughs less logical, less able to see the reasons against the deed. Fin whollyy, Macbeth shows that he has lost it all. Sanity, compassion, logic, everything is gone that once had been so diaphanous at the beginning of the play. Macbeth becomes jaded and cynical, apathetically hopeless, a mass of entity that had once lived in honor. In attempt to decide whether or non to get through Duncan in his soliloquy in Act I moving picture VII, both the process by which Macbeth makes his decision and the final decision that he will not run into his king are indicative of conscience and thoughtfulness, morality and compassion. This is the high point from which Macbeth will ensconce. It is important to sympathise that he oercomes both the temptation of in herent ambition as well as provocation from his wife in regards to his fateful decision. He is on top of his own actions and decisions compassion, an ethical attribute, takes precedence over leap ambition. However he firstly shows he is well aware of the punitive consequences of the mar, so he admits he would commit the assassination if it were the be-all and the end-all, lacking any negative repercussions. The fact that he can und erstand the savvy here shows he is thinking ahead. Then, he literally states what may happen that the bloody instructions, murderous acts, may return to plague the inventor, comeback to murder he who committed murder in the first place. whole a person in a focused state of mind is able to grapple with special(prenominal) potential consequences. Further much, he then goes through a laundry list of ethical reasons not to murder Duncan I am his kinsman and his subject/ Strong both against the deed. He realizes, in a logical progress on these ethical points against the deed that he should protect Duncan, shut the door from the murderer not make up the knife himself. Here, he shows that he understands the responsibilities of being a host and a kinsman, and he is seen respecting the laws of hospitality in spite of tremendous external and internal pressure. He shows he deals. Then, Macbeth acknowledges that Duncan has borne his faculties so meekbeen so comely in officethat his virtu es will plead like angels, and pity, like a naked new-born babe,/Shall blow the outrageous dead in every eye. Macbeth, in comparing virtues to angels, shows us that in his present state of mind, he sees morality as something to strive for, as angels are the representative pinnacle of morality. Furthermore he believes the murder to be a horrid or in this case immoral deed, proving he is able to score corking from bad. The metaphor of the baby, who represents pity, shows that Macbeth understands that pity is pure, like a baby, untainted by immorality and vaulting ambition. Macbeth shows he aspires to be moral, because his final and adamant decision is in accordance with what pity demands. He is not at all numb to the root word of murder he is virtually repulsed by it.In his soliloquy in Act III Scene I, Macbeth is shown to have descended dramatically from his original state he is jealous, fearful, and certainly not compassionate. He finds no reason not to kill Banquo as he had with Duncan, though Macbeth freely admits that Banquo has a royal nature. The usage of royal here means Macbeth still can tell wrong from right, good nature from bad nature. But this does not in any way deter Macbeth from killing Banquo as it did with Duncan. Macbeth says, To be king is nothing /But to be safely thus meaning that the merely way to arrive at safety, which Macbeth equates to happiness, is to slaughter Banquo. What is striking here is what is missing there is no pro-con list, no reasons against the murder. We are also shown here by what is not said that Macbeth is losing his pragmatic skills, because logic dictates that for him to commit another cold-blooded murder, the first having already driven him to incurable insomnia, would cause him only to spiral further and further away from happiness. The fact that he doesnt consider Banquos morality as a reason against killing him shows that Macbeth is on his way to being wholly numb when dealing with death and murder. And, i nstead of being thoughtful, Macbeth is blinded by fear and jealousy, because his genius is rebukd by Banquo. This fear is clear when he says explicitly that there is none but he /Whose being I do fear. Banquo is the only one Macbeth fears. Also, before he was concerned with the laws of hospitality which include modesty, and now by contradiction in terms he calls himself genius and hitherto compares himself to Caesar. His jealousy, not ambition like before, drives him to have contempt for the wise Banquo, because Banquo, according to the witches, is fix to a line of kings which means Macbeth has a fruitless crown. The why of the fear is explained by implication when Macbeth states that the liberal scepter or pointless symbol of Macbeths status as king, will be eddyd with an unlineal hand from his gripe. To wrench is to take forcefully, inspiring fear. This fear later turns to regret, as he says that only for Banquos descendants, only for them, rather than for himself has he murde red the gracious Duncan. In his mind, this means that he has sold his soul, his eternal jewel, to the common enemy of man Satan. This metaphor shows self-acknowledged moral decay, which is a double-sided coin morally he has indeed decayed, and yet he can still take it, which is a step in the right direction. But he is so melodramatic about this point (the two exclamation marks kings and utterance) that he is perhaps losing control over his words if not his sanity, which is confirmed concretely when Banquos ghost emerges from Macbeths tortured psyche later. Total descent is on the horizon. At first he bids about the morality of Duncan and himself. Pity had played an integral role in his life. Now he complaints only for his own well-being. The next step is total apathy.By Act V Scene V, Macbeth has fallen finishedly from his original state. He has lost all compassion, all conscience, even all fear. In essence, Macbeth is totally numb from life. He says explicitly that he cares so little that he has near forgotten the taste of fears. Progressively his fears had narrowed originally he feared the punitive and moral consequences of killing Duncan. At least(prenominal) later he had feared Banquo though for less noble reasons. Now he fears almost nothing. A night-shriek can no longer rouse and stir him because he has suppd full with horrors. The only way horror could become unable to start Macbeth would be if he is too numb even to be able to recognize it. At the beginning, as shown, he is repulsed by the horror of murder now he is too old(prenominal) with slaughterous thoughts even to be frightened. The word slaughterous implies violent, almost gory thoughts, which convey the extent to which Macbeth truly is numb to blood. Macbeth is then told that his wife is dead. Summarily his reaction is one of apathetic despair, which is a huge fall even from caring about being safely king (in deciding to murder Banquo). He only says about his wife that she should have died hereafter, that she would have died sometime in any case. By saying this, Macbeth shows he no longer thinks of time as we do. Obviously, everyone dies, including his wife, but he fails to acknowledge or even care about the time that he could have spent with his dearest partner in greatness mingled with her present death and when she would have died naturally. In fact, his new attitude of time is jaded, awful, hopeless. The monotony of the articulate of the phraseology to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow shows he feels that time truly is just many different paths leading to the same inevitable finding dusty death. All of our yesterdays lead to this death. He leaves no loophole to beat this cynical system of existence. He even urges death on, in relation to himself, saying Out, out brief wick The image of a candle slowly flickering away is Macbeths way of conveying poetically that life is truly nothing more that an empty shell approaching death, a walking shadowthat fret s his hour upon the stage. The word frets implies wasting time. This candle is then heard no more, so therefore its existence, Macbeths existence, is pointless. Even though life is full of sound and fury, powerful events, it still signifies nothing. Life is hollow. The descent is complete. He doesnt care for his wife, nor himself, because life is just a bilgewater told by an idiot. Life, that which Macbeth had hoped to live safely and happily, has now been concluded to be insignificant, a waste of time. Concerning the difference among good and bad, life now for Macbeth is all gray, clouded by cynicism. He simply does not care anymore, because if something signifies nothing then it means nothing. And if one finds no meaning in life, one certainly doesnt care about petty distinctions, such as good versus bad, morality versus immorality, life versus death. Nothing can be lower, emotionally, than this point in Macbeths regression. By depicting Macbeths regression from compassion to ap athy, Shakespeare warns us that one should not leaven to exceed ones set manhood, as Macbeth says, I dare do all that may become a man /Who dares do more, is none. He does dare to do more and consequently ends up as none. Shakespeare summarizes the entire play in a single quotation. By trying to please his wife, trying to prove to her his love, Macbeth violates his idea about what a man is. Up to that point he had been brave and even moral in defending his king Duncan on the battlefield. To him, this is what a man is. Now, for his wife, he goes beyond this definition, in a part that is paradoxically so manly that it truly is not manly it is a bravado. It is as if Macbeth is dared into drinking so much of the wine of ambition that he ends up first drunk, then dead. The first wife-inspired big imbibe is in murdering his king. This is clearly where he goes wrong, because his decision to kill Duncan ultimately leads to his destruction.Works Cited and ConsultedAdelman, Janet. Escaping the Matrix The Construction of masculinity in Macbeth and Coriolanus. Shakespeares Late Tragedies, ed. Susan L. Wofford. Upper Saddle River, NJ Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1996, 134-167.Garber, Marjorie. Macbeth The Male Medusa. Shakespeares Late Tragedies, ed. Susan L. Wofford. Upper Saddle River, NJ Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1996, 74-103.Keirnan, Victor. Eight Tragedies of Shakespeare A Marxist Study. London, NY Verso, 1996.Nelson, T.A. ENGL 533 lecture February 18, 1999.Stallybrass, Peter. Macbeth and Witchcraft. Shakespeares Late Tragedies, ed. Susan L. Wofford. Upper Saddle River, NJ Prentice-Hall Inc. 1996, 104-118.Staunton, Howard, ed. The Globe Illustrated Shakespeare. late York Gramercy Books, 1979.Watson, Robert N. Shakespeare and the Hazards of Ambition. Cambidge, MA Harvard University Press, 1984