Monday 21 November 2011

MACBETH Essay!

Lady Macbeth does a series of actions throughout the play that indicate she is truly evil. There is proof that she is egotistic and does everything she can for herself. She doesn't take Macbeth's feelings into consideration when she comes up with this plan or when she manipulates him into murdering the king. Lady Macbeth does whatever she can to get what she wants no matter how absurd it might be. She will go to dramatic heights to fulfill her wants, she is even willing to weaken her own husband. There are many different examples of how Lady Macbeth is selfish, power-hungry, and manipulative.

You could say Lady Macbeth is power-hungry because she will literally do anything in order to become queen. Back in Elizabethan times, religion is very important and very powerful. When Lady Macbeth gets ideas about murder and disrupting the natural order of things she is allowing herself to think bad thoughts even though it is going against something as critical as religion. She calls upon evil spirits to make her ruthless. "Make thick my blood" she says. By calling on demonic spirits is like calling on Satan to make sure she gets her way. Back then kings were said to be selected by God and since she is thinking of ways to kill this "chosen one" it goes to show how wicked she is. Lady Macbeth soon becomes a victim of her own ambition by planning this murder and making herself demented and eventually to the point of commiting suicide. In Elizabethan times witches were terrifying, and by Lady Macbeth so much a trusting the witches words; is all proof of Lady Macbeth's dark soul and cruel thoughts.

Lady Macbeth proves herself to be a very powerful woman, which is extremely uncommon back then because woman were considered "worthless" and they did not do anything at all. It's ironic since Macbeth is the king's, most almighty knight yet this said-to-be "pointless" woman can still manage to control him. This shows that Lady Macbeth has true power, and she knows how to use it. Right after Lady Macbeth reads the letter from Macbeth about the witches and becoming king, she gets her mind-set on murdering the king. When she tells her husband about her little scheme he becomes panicky and argues with her about how it will never work out, and that they will be caught. Lady Macbeth is not impressed so she uses her femininity to seduce Macbeth and attempts to get him to agree to killing the king. To get him on her side she says things such as "But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and well not fail." By saying these things she is trying to assure him that it's fine and they will not be caught if they act as though they are shocked and hurt like everybody else. Lady Macbeth gets so upset that her so called "tough" husband won't do this task that she makes him feel like he is good-for-nothing if he doesn't do this by ridiculing his masculinity. She finally convinces Macbeth and promised him happiness for when they become royal.

The downfall of Macbeth was caused by all of the stress that Lady Macbeth put on him. I say this because she convinces him to do things that he never felt comfortable doing and makes him believe that he is unkind and heartless. Now that he thinks he is truly monstrous he starts to consider killing himself. Since Lady Macbeth ended up committing suicide, that puts Macbeth in a world full of death and dark thoughts. He realizes that even the woman who manipulated him into this mess and promised him happiness dealt with the same guilt as he did. It begins to become clear that it was never really worth everything that he has put himself through. He regrets obeying his wife because he sees the guilt that Lady Macbeth felt and sees that she was constantly having nightmares and was always washing her hands to try and clear herself from her sins. This would have emotionally driven Macbeth insane because it really goes to show that what he's done was not the right thing to do, and the person he was before all of this happened was now completely gone.

So as you can see, Lady Macbeth is a very narcissistic person due to the fact that there are many different elements throughout this play that proves that she only cares for herself. Her drive and ambition to be queen lead this self-loving, brain-sick woman to her vicious death. Both her and Macbeth go mad in the end and all the guilt from the murder plus the stress just made them loose their minds. There was no way to escape from the shame and dishonour so both of them ended up lifeless.

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