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Who Was Responsible For Macbeth's Downfall

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The downfall of a great man to a paranoid, murderous, monster is a sad sight to see in William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Macbeth is too ambitious to settle as just the Thane of Glamis and Cawdor; he needs to be king, and the only way to do that is by committing despicable deeds. The witches are a key component of Macbeth's demise. They crave mischief and evil and they plant the ideas into Macbeth's head which send him on his killing spree. Therefore the witches are the most important factor of Macbeth's downfall. They control the lives and actions of the characters through their evil powers and play mind games on Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is responsible because she calls Macbeth a woman and, more subtly than the witches, messes with …show more content…

Lady Macbeth hopes that Macbeth will fulfill his ambitions and make her queen. As well as Macbeth, she too is very ambitious and hopes for things of her own in her life as queen. She uses Macbeth to kill Duncan so that he can become king and she can become queen. She mocks Macbeth by calling him a coward and a woman, but the real cowardly act Macbeth commits was listening to his wife and murdering the king in his sleep. This deceitful woman convinces Macbeth that she will help him kill Duncan but she keeps changing her story. First she says that she is going to plunge the knife into Duncan along with Macbeth. Then, she says she will be there next to him, and then finally she backed out completely because she claims the king looks like her father while he is sleeping. After the murders that she causes, Lady Macbeth is made crazy by her guilt. Even though she persuades Macbeth to carry out the murder, she regrets it deeply because it makes her whole life spiral out of control. Just as Lady Macbeth convinces her husband to kill the king, Lady Macbeth is indirectly persuaded to convince Macbeth. The witches take control of her in order to carry out the rest of their plan. Lady Macbeth in some cases mimics the witches and this insinuates that she may be under their control. When Lady Macbeth receives the letter from Macbeth she states wants to go through with the plan to kill the king but she …show more content…

The witches are able to manipulate Macbeths ambition, control his and his wife's actions, and make him too confident going into his final battle. The witches tell Macbeth many things that he believes and completely trusts. They tell him that he will be Thane of Cawdor and King, they tell him he will not be killed until Birnam wood moves, he will be killed by a man not born of a woman, to fear Macduff, and several others. Everything the witches tell Macbeth does end up being true but that is because they make their prophecies come true. The witches manipulate everybody to get what they want. Once they plant the idea in Macbeth's already ambitious mind all they need is for Lady Macbeth to do a little persuading. The witches tell Macbeth that he can not be killed by the average man so when the battle comes he has no fear and is reckless until he finds out what is different about Macduff (Hacht). Even in his final moments Macbeth never argues the fate of the witches; Macbeth knows he will be killed by Macduff but fights him anyway and dies. The witches curse the sailor the same way they curse Lady Macbeth. She is sleepless, and Macbeth fears sleep as well because he killed the king in his sleep. This is an example of the magic powers of the witches and how they disrupt Macbeth and his wife. By the time of the battle he has recently lost his wife, because she commits suicide, is sleep deprived, and

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