The Influence of Ambition in Macbeth by William Shakespeare

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Everybody in their mind has some type of ambition that can influence them in the wrong way. There is good and bad ambition. Like Cesar Chavez once said that “ We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community... Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own.” Macbeth’s ambition is change by the perspective of many things. The things that corrupted him are prophecy, Lady Macbeth, and the three apparitions. The prophecy comes from the Weird Sisters, or the three witches, and the three apparitions. The three witches tell Macbeth that he will be king by saying: “ All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!, All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!, All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!” (I.III.52-57). Macbeth gets a little glimpse of his forthcoming. The three witches tell him that he will rule Glamis, Cawdor and much more. Macbeth’s ambition here is to know more and to know how it will happen. The Witches also tell Banquo that he will have heirs or he will reign, he will be lesser than Macbeth, but greater, and not so happy, but happier. Macbeth doesn’t take any action in his prophecy because as of right now in the story he is very noble to his King. At this point in the play Macbeth is at the beginning of his ambition. Macbeth wants to know more and has an ambition to see how all of these scenarios will happen. Macbeth’s ambitions grows strongly after the three witches try to light a fire in his heart so that he will want all the success of being the Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth know what he has to do in order to be the King, but he is unsure that he wants to do it. In Act I Macbeth is rea... ... middle of paper ... ...Lady Macduff runs out of the room and the murderer that Macbeth hired to kill Macduff kill her also. I won’t explain the rest of the story to you because there is not much of Macbeth's ambition, but of how he died honorably fighting to the death. Macbeth’s ambition spiralled out of control in scenes I-V. He started with hardly any ambition to kill his friend and the King. With Lady Macbeth's thoughts and not so encouraging words to do the right thing made him more ambitious to commit this awful murder. With those kept in mind the most important spike of ambition is when he knew Macduff would fight and Banquo would rule. Macbeth did not want this so he killed off both of them and Macduff's family. All I can say is that Macbeth’s ambition got him killed. Just like Cesar Chavez said, “your ambition should be based on including the aspirations of others and yourself.”

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