According to dictionary.com, hell is defined as the place or state of punishment of the wicked after death; the abode of evil and condemned spirits. And Heaven is defined as the place or state of existence of the blessed after the mortal life. In the tragic play, Macbeth by William Shakespeare the comparison between heaven and hell is truly emphasized. William Shakespeare depicts a character, Macbeth with honor and loyalty that turns evil because of his ambitions and interpretations of the witches’ prophecies. Macbeth's first dark act, the killing of Duncan leads him to continue having drastic approaches in accomplishing his goals. As the tragedy develops, Macbeth’s moral decline is heightened through the comparison of heaven and hell.
In the first act, Macbeth’s ambition starts with believing in the witches prophecies. While coming home after
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To start, when Lady Macbeth's preparation of making Duncan's guards drunk is done, she rings the bell and signals Macbeth to kill Duncan. He says, “I go and it is done. The bell invites me. / Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell/That summons thee to heaven or to hell.” (II.ii.75-77). He says that the sound of the bell tells Macbeth that Duncan will be killed and go to either heaven or hell. Macbeth is filled with guilt immediately after committing that action, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood/ Clean from my hand?” (II.ii.78-79). Now Macbeth’s only choice is to go forward as King of Scotland and live on with his guilty conscience. After this happens, a knock from Macbeth’s door is heard, the porter answers, “Here’s a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key” (II.iii.1-3). He acts as if he is the devil porter at the gates of hell. Shakespeare creates a sense that people who is entering will go to hell. Lady Macbeth and Macbeth do not even have to enter it, they already are in
The writer, Shakespeare, illustrates to the audience that the consequences do not just affect the person who have the ambitions, but it also affects the people around them. He does this by expressing the ambition through the characters of Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are shown to be ambitious and their ambition feeds off of each other. Macbeth is initially shown to the audience as a brave and selfless soldier who is loyal to his king till the day he dies. But, once Macbeth hears the prophecy of the three witches’, (that he will become the King of Scotland), Macbeth changes. He develops a deep, dark and horrible ambition of ruthlessly murdering the king and taking his place. Macbeth then writes to Lady Macbeth telling her of his ambitions. This leads to Lady Macbeth provoking Macbeth’s ambitions instead of telling him to forget about it. As she provokes Macbeth the audience can clearly see that this woman is bad news. “Was the hope drunk?Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since?... and wakes it now, to look so green and pale which thou esteem'st the ornament of life, and live a coward in thine own esteem, Letting 'I
William Shakespeare wrote the play Macbeth in approximately 1606. The play is a tragedy and this can be often identified before we have even read the play. The title “Macbeth” alone suggests the genre of the play is a tragedy as it is the name of a character. Life in Shakespeare’s time was very religious and the play was written in order to please King James I who was on the throne at this point. The idea of the theme of religion and witchcraft fitting into the play was also to please King James I as he was interested in witchcraft. The majority of people living in Shakespeare’s time were Christians and they believed that if you lived a good life, you would go to Heaven and if you were bad in life, you would go to Hell. At the time of the
‘Two truths are told/ As happy prologues to the swelling act/ Of the imperial theme (I.iii.127-129). Macbeth enjoys the thought of perhaps becoming king in this quote. He is optimistic about the witches’ prophecies, and deep inside, he hopes that they will come true. The two truths are the prophecies of becoming thane of Glamis and Cawdor. The word ‘happy’ reveals his excitement about the possibility of being king; if one prophecy came true, why not the other? Macbeth is especially influenced by the prophecies during the end of the play. ‘[…] for none of woman born/ Shall harm Macbeth (IV.i.80-81)’. This prophecy causes Macbeth to think he is invincible. It reinforces his confidence so that he is blinded from its true meaning. However, the prophecy is confusing, since all humans are born from a mother, then logically, no human should be able to defeat Macbeth. Therefore, it is understandable why Macbeth becomes extremely hubris following this prophecy. The witches’ gave Macbeth a nudge in the beginning and then pushed him to his death in the end using the prophecies. Without the assurance of these prophecies, Macbeth would have never acted on his ambition alone and there would be no play to analyze.
In the novel, “Macbeth”, Shakesphere builds suspense and mystery throughout the passage, maintaining flexible characters that are constantly changing. Numerous events take place throughout the book which lead to a tragic ending. He begins with presenting Macbeth as a noble man who want to do good deeds but Lady Macbeth turns his husband into the exact opposite. Macbeth begins to have strong ambitions, causing him to make tragic decisions: Some which he may have never imagined he would do. The tragic results of the Macbeths actions lead to inevitable tragedy of nature.
Macbeth’s ambition for power is strongly shown through foreshadowment throughout the play. His ambition is seen at the start of the play towards the end, however, his ambition is one of the causes of his death. The witches tell Macbeth a prophecy that he will become the Thane of Glamis, Thane
Again this is another massive request from Lady Macbeth, but Macbeth seems to obey anyway, showing her power over him. Macbeth however is ‘appalled by every noise’ and ‘Wake Duncan with thy knocking’. The fact that he is ‘appalled by every noise’ suggests Macbeth is a nervous wreck, and the fact that he wishes Duncan was alive suggests he is racked by guilt, showing how Lady Macbeth is very much still in control of the relationship.
The poem Inferno is about a man who has “lost the path that does not stray” (Inferno, Canto I, line 3) where “the path” represents the path to Heaven. Dante, having strayed from the path, is in danger of being sent to Hell. When Beatrice, whom Dante loved before her early death, finds out that Dante has strayed she becomes worried that he will not be able to join her in Heaven. Beatrice wants to help Dante find God again, but because she is an angel, she cannot walk through Hell or Purgatory and in her stead she asks the Roman poet Virgil to guide Dante on a cautionary trip. Much the way Dante travels through Hell in the Divine Comedy, Macbeth must endure the consequences of his actions.
Macbeth’s ambition is powered by the sisters. Through the sisters he learns that he is to be king, he does not know how he is going to become king however. Ambition is the key to his downfall. Before he had this ambition he said that he would never have dreamed of killing the king to become king. The ambition drove him to kill the king, so that he could become then king.
Macbeth’s own ambition precedes the proclamations of the witches on the heath in act 1 scene 3. The witches only served as mirrors on which Macbeth could see his own mind.
Evil is shown to get the best of Macbeth as he gains power. Macbeth begins to turn away from being a hero and good to the devil’s spawn. Before, he used to be open and let people
Macbeth displays ambition by the way he talks and his actions over the course of the play. Ambition is a strong desire to do or achieve something that takes hard work and dedication. In the play Macbeth, Macbeth has strong desire to be successful out on the battlefield and also in his pursuit to take over as king. Macbeth’s ambition is detrimental to himself and that is shown throughout the play. Macbeth’s strong desires and aspirations end up hurting him after all and the bad things he had done eventually catch up to him.
In William Shakespeare's Macbeth, the main character, Macbeth, is a brave and loyal subject to the King of Scotland, but as the play progresses, his character begins to change drastically. Evil and unnatural powers, as well as his own passion to become king, take over his better half and eventually lead to his downfall. The three main factors that intertwine with one another that contribute to Macbeth's tragic end are the prophecies told by the three witches, Lady Macbeth's influence, and finally, Macbeth's excessive passion and ambition which drove his desire to become king to the utmost extreme. The prophecy told by the three witches was what triggers the other factors that contribute to Macbeth s downfall. In the first act, the witches
The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare recounts Macbeth's meteoric rise as a soldier and promising future leader whose megalomaniacal ambition led to his tragic downfall. In addition to Macbeth's ambitions, which initially enable him to be strong leader and soldier, he is influenced heavily by his wife, Lady Macbeth, and the three witches that prophesize his ascent to the throne, as well as warn him of his eventual demise. It can be argued that it is Macbeth's ambition that allows him to succeed in his endeavors, however the goals to which he is working toward influence the results of his hard work. Macbeth's ambitions help him to become a war hero, and as his goals change, his ambitions drive him to become a tyrannical villain.
Ambition is a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work. In Williams Shakespeare 's Macbeth the characters Lady Macbeth and Macbeth have a strong desire to ascend the throne and they are determined to do whatever it takes in order to achieve this goal, including deceiving and killing those they are closest to. The zeal of ambition predominately persuades both characters actions in Macbeth. Lady Macbeth portrays how the forces of ambition strike her to instil a powerful drive in her husband, also how she demonstrates an overweening pride and lack of morals in order to reach a goal and lastly how ambition leads Macbeth to betray those cares about most.
The tragedy seen in this play is the loss of the man that Macbeth could have been, hadn’t he given in to fulfilling his ambition. Shakespeare leads us to see the deterioration in both Macbeth’s character and his morality. Macbeth, being the tragic hero of the play, undergoes some great changes throughout the acts. Macbeth cannot resist his ambition, and this leads him to his downfall. After a lot of deliberating within himself he decides to act on the witches’ prophecies. He freely decides to believe in what the witches