Macbeth would never have thought seriously about killing Duncan without the witches. Yet the combination of both his ambitious nature and the initial prophesies leads him to kill the King. It is Lady Macbeth who states, “Thou wouldst be great/ Art not without ambition.” Macbeth states that it is “his besetting sin: I have no spur/ To prick the sides of my intent, but only/ Vaulting ambition.” Macbeth's continued ambition is present in his wanting to have a succession of kings after him. Macbeth's ambition is deep within him and because of this, both the witches and Lady Macbeth are able to sway him to evil. It is this ambition that gets him into so much trouble initially.
Act 4 Scene 1 opens up with the witches brewing a concoction, saying gruesome things to suggest to the audience that their potion was going to be something awful. Hecate appears and is angry with the Weird Sisters for talking to Macbeth without consulting her first. She becomes happy when she realises that the Weird Sisters has Macbeth under their fingers, by telling him good things about his future and then twisting everything.
‘By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes,’ says the second witch, telling the audience as well as the two other witches that something evil was coming, Macbeth. This shows that the witches themselves are wicked and are instruments of darkness, as they knew that ‘something wicked’ was coming.
When Macbeth walks into the cavern and asks the witches what they were doing, the witches don’t give him a straight answer, they just say, “A deed without a name.” This shows that what they were doing was none of Macbeth’s business.
Macbeth comes to the witches to ask about his future and doesn’t care if ‘destruction sicken.’ He is desperate because he is pleading the witches and this shows that the witches have power over Macbeth.
When the witches shows him the apparitions, Macbeth is pleased with what he hears for he ‘shall never be vanquished’ and ‘none of women born Shall harm Macbeth.’ Macbeth’s mind is overridden by greed and ambition, he becomes more and more evil so he doesn’t think about what the prophecies truly meant. This shows that the witches are very influential once they have chosen their prey.
When Macbeth wants to know whether ‘Banquo’s issues ever Reign in this kingdom’ and the witches says, “Seek to know no more,” this made Macbeth angry because he desperately wants to know and this shows that the witches were powerful for they have made Macbeth’s ambition become bigger. I think that Macbeth should have listened to the witches when they say, “Seek to know no more,” because it seems to me that the witches think that Macbeth’s ambition has gotten to far, but when Macbeth demands to know, the witches have no choice but to feed his hunger and fill his satisfaction. When Macbeth demands to know, I think that the witches feels sorry for him because they say, “Show his eyes, and grieve his heart; Come like shadows, so depart.”
The witches’ have a lot of influence over Macbeth because they showed him that they were still the masters by showing him ‘the show of eight kings,’ and when he commanded them to stop, ‘I’ll see no more,’ they didn’t. This drives Macbeth on the verge of insanity, which is what the witches wanted; I think this is one of Macbeth’s downfalls.
Once Macbeth kills for the first time, he has no choice but to continue to cover up his wrong doings, or risk loosing everything he has worked so hard for. In the end, it all comes to Macbeth himself.
Everyone is responsible for his own destiny. This is an essential theme in this tragedy. Macbeth chooses to gamble with his soul and when he does this it is only him who chooses to lose it. He is responsible for anything he does and must take total accountability for his actions. Macbeth is the one who made the final decision to carry out his actions. He made these final decisions and continued with the killings to cover that of King Duncan.
The killing of Duncan starts an unstoppable chain of events in the play that ends with the murder of Macbeth and the suicide of Lady Macbeth. Macbeth chooses to murder Duncan. Macbeth, in the beginning had all of the qualities of a honourable gentleman who could become anything. This is all shattered when his ambition overrides his sense of morality. Although Macbeth is warned as to the validity of the witches prophesies, he is tempted and refuses to listen to reason from Banquo. When the second set of prophesies Macbeth receives begin to show their faults Macbeth blames the witches for deceiving him with half-truths. While the witches are not totally responsible for the actions of Macbeth, they are responsible for introducing the ideas to Macbeth, which in turn fired up Macbeth's ambition and led to a disastrous and unnecessary chain of events.
