The reason I mention Sigmund Freud’s theory when talking about ‘Macbeth’ is because they show a comparison. The ‘ID’ can be compared to the witches in Macbeth. They both conform to the same principle. The ‘ID’ is wild it is untamed much like the Witches. They both are uncontrollable, we cannot control our primary desires and the witches in Macbeth are also uncontrollable.
The witches in Macbeth are typical of seventeenth century witches. They have supernatural powers, they can predict the future e.g. Predicting when the battle of Cawdor will end, they can turn into things e.g. Rats, they can ‘hover’, they can change the weather e.g. ‘I‘ll give thee a wind’, they can stop people sleeping. The witches all chant and speak in rhyme and riddle, which is a traditional feature of a seventeenth century ‘real’ witch. There are three witches. The witches as well as being typical of ‘real’ witches in the seventeenth century are also disorderly and chaotic like dreams, they both do not keep to spatial reality or time, there are both blurry you never seem to see the full picture, they both show some connection to real life because the witches seem to show what Macbeth desires are and how he can get the, just like a fantasy dream might show what we want and desire. What Macbeth wants is more power and more power for him is to become the king and the witches just like our dreams would present us with what it would be like but the witches go further than dreams and tell him how he could obtain his desires. Both dreams and the witches are unrealistic; they do not conform to an ordinary structure.
Macbeth lived in a hierarchical society where there is order. Macbeth’s society honours bravery. Men are warriors, the better warrior they are the better chance they have of being promoted in the assemblage. Macbeth was a great warrior and his value on the battlefield meant Macbeth being given more power. Loyalty to the king and country is an immensely important value to a person in Macbeth’s society. In Macbeth’s society, a Woman is supposed to be attractive, passive and a good mother. The witches on the other hand are the total opposite; they reflect a difference to Macbeth’s society. The witches are on the outskirts of society upon the heath. They appear on the margins. They are associated with disorder in nature; they meet in desolate spaces where the nature is at its most powerful. The witches are rebellious. They think up plans and plot things. The witches raise thought of rebellion in Macbeth. Both the witches and Macbeth’s society are essentially evil they are both based on bloodshed and violence, and Macbeth simply takes this evil to an extreme.
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s consequence of ultimately following their desire ends up meaning both of them will die. Maybe William Shakespeare uses the witches to send a message over to us the interpreter that we should not follow our desires and we should repress them because no good can come of them.
Another function of the witches in Macbeth is as an embarrassment they wander into this otherwise serious play and mutter mumbo-jumbo about toads and liver. They are like an uninvited guest who keeps on reappearing. I believe that if we took the witches out of Macbeth not only would it make no sense it is as though there are realer than anyone else is. The witches no more than anyone else about what are going on. They are closer to the audience’s point of view than anyone else. They are practically the narrators.
I conclude that the witch’s main function in Macbeth is to make comparison between Macbeth’s conscious, real world and Macbeth’s unconscious, dream world. However, there are many other functions, which would be absurd to overlook if you wanted to see the full picture of why the witches are in Macbeth.
