Macbeth - Ambition

964 Words2 Pages

Macbeth’s long journey towards possessing the throne travels through many high hurdles. The first hurdle, which is a sign for further hurdles, is the murder of Duncan the king. The build-up to the killing of Duncan begins with the witches prophesying that Macbeth will be king. Macbeth wants to fulfil this prophecy due to his high ambitions. However, the prophecy is fulfilled only because Lady Macbeth leads her husband through the barriers. It is Macbeth’s wife who causes the death of Duncan.

Lady Macbeth acts as Macbeth’s superior while the murder of Duncan occurs. Lady Macbeth has high ambitions for her husband. She understands that Macbeth has a lust for the throne. However, she fears that her husband would have trouble when attempting to murder Duncan and covet the throne because she regards Macbeth as “full o’ the milk of human kindness”. Since Lady Macbeth knows that her husband would never be able to perform such a task, she decides to control the procedures of the murdering of Duncan. She demands that “direst cruelty” contaminate her. She congregates everything that is evil inside her body in order to perform the evil deed of murdering Duncan. If Lady Macbeth is absent from the story, the murder of Duncan would not take place. This is so because during many parts of the story, Macbeth possesses uncertainty of whether it is righteous to take the life of such a great king in order to feed his hunger for power. Despite Macbeth doubting whether or not he should accept the murder of Duncan, he is always convinced by his wife that murdering Duncan is appropriate. Lady Macbeth even sees her husband’s weaknesses and uses his weaknesses to harass him into killing Duncan. This can be observed when, at one stage, Macbeth criticises the idea of killing a good king and believes that the killing should not proceed, his wife forces him to kill by saying offensive words. She questions Macbeth’s love for her, she questions Macbeth’s masculinity and she criticises Macbeth’s desire to be king. These three statements offend Macbeth. Because Macbeth wants to prove his manhood, his love for his wife and his desire to be king, he agrees to murder Duncan. Also, after the murder, Macbeth is worried and conscious of his guilt. On the contrary, Lady Macbeth is calm about the murder. She orders Macbeth to “wash this filthy guilt” from his hands.

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