From the letter, Lady Macbeth says that he said that he should murder Duncan when he never actually does. He is not strong enough to stand against her. This means he is indecisive and should not be pitied. Here he says that they should not continue any further in this deed. –
‘We will proceed no further in this business.’
Straight away Lady Macbeth attacks him and tells lies. –
‘Was the hope drunk wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since?’
He never actually suggested killing the King, but she makes him think so, and using her love as a bribe, she gets him to do it.
Before that speech though, Macbeth gives away that he knows what he is going to do is evil. –
‘My thought, whose murder is yet but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man.’
This speech sows why he is even thinking about murdering Duncan.-
‘If it were done, when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly: if th’assassination could trammel up the consequences, and catch, with his surcease, success.’
The last sentence shows why he is doing this – he wants success. The whole reason for doing this is selfish and this shows he is slowly going over to evil.
Later on, just before he is about to kill Duncan, he sees a dagger hovering in mid-air. He tries to clutch it but it is in his mind. –
‘Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee: I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.’
As he carries on trying to grab it, following it along as it leads him to Duncan’s chambers, it shows that he knows what he is doing. He knows it is evil but carries on just like trying to grab the dagger. He knows he shouldn’t have the dagger but still wants it. The dagger is a symbol of his evil mind, yet after he has completed the murdering, he still has a guilty conscience. He does not do the right thing though. Instead of just stopping killing people he carries on until he thinks he will be happy.
But, after the murder, he is visibly disturbed, showing that he did not actually want to do it. –
‘Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep’ – the innocent sleep.’
He is sucked in very quickly by the witches’ promise of being King. He thinks he will get happiness from murdering the king but all it brings is more grief. He does not finish his exploration of evil and is just on a straight line of murder leading to murder. If he explored more, he would have found it was bad and not have listened to his wife, or just let it come to chance. He is too ambitious for his own good and this sucks him into a vicious cycle of killing followed by more killing to try and reach happiness.
Once he has become king after killing Duncan, he can’t enjoy it because Banquo is suspicious of him. So, to reach happiness he gets Banquo killed. He gets murderers to kill him by telling them that if they kill him then they are men. This is exactly the same as Lady Macbeth did to him to get him to kill Duncan and it works. After he kills Banquo then he still isn’t happy. When holding a feast with all of the Thanes he sees a ghost of Banquo sitting in his seat. –
‘Avaunt! And quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee!’
He sees Banquo sitting in his seat showing he has a troubled conscience. But, to murder Banquo he didn’t need Lady Macbeth to tell him to do it. This means that he is becoming more evil with no influence. After being troubled by the ghost of Banquo, Macbeth explores evil further by going back to the witches for more answers.
He goes back to them and they show him three apparitions. They all tell him something that is true, even if they seem to contradict themselves. The first apparition says:
‘Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! Beware Macduff, Beware the Thane of Fife. Dismiss me. Enough.’
He thanks them for telling them to beware of Macduff. This means he trusts them. This is a bad idea as they are evil and are manipulating him into doing what they want. The second apparition confuses him. –
‘For none of woman born shall harm Macbeth.’
Macbeth says that Macduff should live then if he can’t fear someone who was born of woman. The third apparition makes Macbeth think that no one can ever harm him by saying. –
‘Macbeth shall never be vanquished be until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against him.’
Of course Macbeth thinks that could never happen, most people would, but it does. All the things that the apparitions say are true. After he hears them, he thinks he can’t be hurt. So, everything he wants to do will happen. –
‘From this moment the very firstlings of my heart shall be the firstlings of my hand.’
By doing this, he becomes a murderous hated monster. Everyone wants to overthrow him because he is killing everyone off. Scotland becomes a horrible place to live so all the Thanes go to England a build up an army to take on Macbeth. But, he still thinks he can’t be killed so he doesn’t take any notice of the threat. Because he trusted the apparitions, he loses touch with reality. He goes mad and so does Lady Macbeth as he is not really talking to her. She keeps on rubbing her hands to try and get rid of the imaginary blood that she thinks is there from Duncan’s murder. When she dies, Macbeth doesn’t feel any sorrow at all, he just says she should have dies ‘hereafter’. This is not a very nice thing to say, which shows he has turned into a monster.
In the middle of the play, he says that if he were to stop killing now then it would be just as bad as if he carried on. –
‘I am in blood stepped so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.’
This speech shows that he knew exactly what he was doing.
I think there can be a bit of pity for Macbeth as he was tricked by the witches into doing something he never wanted to do. He was forced into evil by his wife, who in the end was not as evil as first seen. She cracked before he did and probably killed herself but she had already gone mad. When he realises he was tricked by the witches, he snaps out of it and becomes courageous again as in the beginning. –
‘Before my body, I throw my warlike shield.’
This shows he has broken free of the witches’ evil which tricked him throughout the whole play.
At the end of the play, he realises that all that he has done was to try and achieve happiness and he never reached that because he just couldn’t stop killing. –
‘I have lived long enough: my way of life
Is fa1l'n into the sere, the yellow leaf,
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath
Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not.’
He finds out he has no friends or honour or anything he set out to get. He wasted his life. At this point I pity him.
I think that there can be a little bit of pity for Macbeth but not that much as he did know what he was doing, but was not fully informed.
