Macbeth is a man with . I think this because he knows that what he is thinking of doing is wrong. He says ‘ Let not the light see my black and deep desires; The eye wink at the hand’. I think when he says ‘light’ he means god. He doesn’t want god to see what his hand is going to do. He wants to get rid of all light so no one can see what he is about to do. The eye used to be thought as the route to the soul, so by saying ‘the eye wink at the hand’ he doesn’t even his own soul to see what his hand is going to do.
Macbeth is a man of ambition. He is determined to become king, so even when Duncan granted the title ‘Prince of Cumberland’ to his son, Macbeth felt he too had to get to that status or beyond at whatever cost. He says ‘The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step on which I must fall down, or else o’er-leap, for in my way it lies’. It lies in his way to the throne so he is willing to do anything to get there.
By reading what Lady Macbeth says we learn that Macbeth is not ruthless. She says ‘ Thou wouldst be great, art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it; what thou wouldst highly, that wouldst thou holily’. He she is saying that Macbeth would be great not with ambition but with ruthlessness (illness), and that he wants to be great but he wants to do it in a proper manner, not wrongly, like killing the king.
Macbeth is rational. I feel this because he thinks about why he should and should not kill the king. He is also very unsure of himself. He says ‘I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition’. He is saying that his only motive for killing Duncan is ambition. He says he shouldn’t kill the king because ‘bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor’. He is worried that if he kills the king it might be what happens to him if he does becomes king. He says ‘Duncan … hath been so clear in his great office…’. He knows Duncan was a very good ruler and all the people liked him. Macbeth also thinks of the old Scottish tradition of the host being the keeper of the guests’ life. He says ‘his host … should against his murderer shut the door, not bear the knife myself’. All of this deep thought and weighing of the advantages and disadvantages made me think he was rational. It also makes me fell that he is a little bit scared.
He is easily swayed from his decision. He decides that he doesn’t want to kill Duncan, but his reason for not wanting to, seems as though he wouldn’t mind the power of being king. He says ‘ He hath honour’d me of late; and I have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people, which would be worn now in their newest gloss…’. This is saying that he is enjoying the feeling of being famous and powerful. This is the final decision he has made but Lady Macbeth manages to persuade him to go ahead and kill Duncan. Macbeth shows his weakness in front of Lady Macbeth. He changes his mind when she insults him. He then begins to make plans himself. He says ‘Will it not be receiv’d, when we have mark’d with blood those sleepy two, of his chamber, and us’d their very daggers that they have done’t’. The plan is to kill Duncan using the swords of his guards and then blame it on them. Macbeth has lost his doubt and fear.
Through act 1 we notice a change in Macbeth’s character. At the beginning he is loyal and by the end he is disloyal. This huge change in his character shows us that Macbeth is a very realistic and lifelike character and isn’t 2D.
