Macbeth at the start of the play has a very good reputation; he is looked on by the others as a very brave, very strong leader. At the start of the play this is what his reputation is, by the end his reputation has crumbled. He is brave by the amount of people he has killed in battle. Others view him as a very powerful figure in Scotland.
Macbeth does indeed have a fatal flaw and yes, I think it is ambition. I think that his very strong willed wife builds up the majority of his ambition. The way she persuades him makes out as if he is a puppet and she is pulling the strings. In the end his doubts and awareness of the evil killing and its consequences are weaker than the persuasion of his wife.
Macbeth, after he has killed Duncan is in depth with remorse. Once he has committed the murder he cannot think at all for himself and if it had not been for his overpowering, domineering wife then he would probably end up confessing to the murder or being found out. He is certainly not a dead butcher as the way he acts is totally inappropriate for a cold-blooded killer. His nervousness is just one of the signs. He forgets to do things like to take the daggers back so that others get the blame for the killing. He is a merely a man controlled by his wife.
Macbeth, when he has Banquo killed is even stronger evidence that he is not just a cold-blooded killer as they all make out. His hiring of assassins shows that he has not even got the bottle to murder someone himself and needs someone else to commit the deed. The assassins are the ‘dead butchers’ not Macbeth. His sleeplessness also shows that he worries about this and his seeing of Banquo’s ghost and his reaction to it proves it even more. No cold hearted, spineless killer would be thinking about these types of things.
Macbeth in Act five shows his true colours. He recovers his courage without the help of his wife, the death of his wife especially as he mourns over her and takes it badly. His reaction to life is that he does not have a place on this earth anymore and has no reason worth living for, something a ‘dead butcher’ would never think about. He is aware of how much he has lost and the awareness that he has actually been defeated by Macduff, a person who was ‘not born of woman’ as he was cut from the mother’s stomach when born.
I think that yes, people should feel sympathy for Macbeth but then I also think they should look upon him as an easily influenced person and that can make him dangerous if he is convinced to murder people. I think partly to blame for Macbeth’s actions are the 3 witches who start all of these murder thoughts inside his mind. The main person to blame is Lady Macbeth; she is, if anything, the ‘dead butcher’ out of her and Macbeth. I think that Macbeth’s good qualities do outweigh his bad ones but lets not forget that he did actually commit murders for his own advantage and it takes some evil to be able to commit murder, whatever the circumstances, but by no means is Macbeth a ‘cold blooded, dead butcher’. We can’t also forget that he didn’t just murder once, like a normal man might be able to do, but he murdered more times. This could be influence by other people or it could be his own mind telling him these things. If there is one thing we can learn from this, it is to not be easily influenced by anybody whatever the circumstances may be.
ALISTAIR NAIKEN 9W
