Introduction:
Shakespeare’s play “Macbeth”, written in 1606, deals with a man named Macbeth who develops the ambition to become king. The main theme of Macbeth is the corrupting nature of unchecked ambition, which is deployed through his struggle between his ambition and morals, driven by his desire for power.
Ambition in Macbeth :
In Macbeth, ambition is presented as a dangerous quality. It is the driving forces of the play. It is ambition which causes the downfall of Macbeth and triggers a series of deaths in the play. Macbeth is inspired by the prophecies of the Witches to be ambitious and his ambition is driven by Lady Macbeth.
Macbeth’s uncontrolled ambition is driven by a number of factors. At the beginning of the play Macbeth is shown to be a loyal, strong, brave warrior who has won in battle and brought victory to Scotland. Shakespeare uses foreshadowing as a dramatic technique in Scene1, Act 1 to allow the reader to predict what might occur later on in the story. The witches set the tone in this scene with a storm and predictions that Macbeth's life will become so confused he will find it difficult to differentiate between right and wrong, “fair and foul”. When Macbeth thinks he hears a voice while killing Duncan, it foreshadows the insomnia that plagues Macbeth and his wife hence presenting the consequences of ambition.
Lady Macbeth is more ambitious than her husband and has fewer moral ethics. It is Lady Macbeth’s driving force that encourages Macbeth to overcome his strong sense of guilt and take action on the prophecies. She does this by attacking his manhood and declares that she would have murdered.
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of th’imperial theme"
Macbeth speaks these lines as he realizes that the witches’ prophecy (that he will be Thane of Cawdor) has come true. He immediately starts to wonder whether this means that their third prophecy (that he will become king) will also be true. The eagerness with which he turns to this idea suggests that he finds the possibility appealing, even though he also realizes he would have to commit a terrible and violent act in order to achieve the position. These lines hint at Macbeth’s ambition and foreshadow his later actions even though, at this point in the play, he seems to refuse to consider acting upon it.
When the Witches meet Macbeth and Banquo, they greet Macbeth as the Thane of Glamis and the Thane of Cawdor, and predict that he will be the king of Scotland. Of Banquo, the Witches predict that he will be the begetter of a line of kings. When Rosse and Angus inform Macbeth about the conferment by King Duncan of the title of the Thane of Cawdor on him, Macbeth hopefully begins to look forward to the fulfillment of the final prediction, that is, of his becoming king. Thus, the prophesy of the Witches had made a deep impression on Macbeth’s mind. When Duncan nominates Malcolm to be to the heir to the throne, Macbeth thinks it to be an obstacle in the way of his becoming king. So, the thought of murdering Duncan has taken a firm root in his mind. It is evident that the Witches have stimulated in Macbeth an ambition which would have remained dormant if the Witches would make no prophecy.
But the Witches are not fully responsible for Duncan’s murder. It is Lady Macbeth who gives the fuel to the fire of Macbeth’s ambition to kill Duncan. When Duncan arrived at Inverness, Macbeth controlled his ambition for the time being and did not kill Duncan. But his wife, Lady Macbeth brings him back to his original decision. Lady Macbeth convinced Macbeth that the murder would go undiscovered, and this was what gave Macbeth the courage and determination to proceed with his plans. Her forceful arguments revive his ambition and cannot but agree to his wife’s plan. So, he says:
"I am settled, and bend up
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat."
Thus, Macbeth kills Duncan being influenced by his wife. Having taken the road of self damnation, he is now unable to stop. Macbeth is now always ready to remove every obstacle from his way to remaining in his state of power. Realizing the danger from Banquo and thinking of the prophecy that the throne will eventually pass to the descendants of Banquo, Macbeth hatches a conspiracy against that man and has him murdered. It is Macbeth’s second crime. He commits another crime warned by the first apparition. The first apparition warned Macbeth to beware of Macduff and Macbeth has already been feeling apprehensive of Macduff’s attitude towards him. As a result, he decides to massacre Macduff’s family.
Here Macbeth degenerates into a butcher. His tragedy lies in this degeneration. At last comes the time of his doom. When he faces Macduff in the battlefield, he tells him that nobody born of a woman can kill him. At the time Macduff reveals that he was removed from his mother’s womb prematurely by means of a caesarean operation, and that he is not therefore born of a woman in the normal sense. On hearing this Macbeth gives up all hopes and within moments he is slain by Macduff.
In today's time ambition is something different from history, people and society both accept it and look those things in very positive way.
In today’s world, there are many aspects around us everyday that contribute to how we shape and live on through our lives. The way we live and see life go on in society however are through two main driving forces. These forces are that of ambition and desire. Both of these are two rags cut from the same cloth, yet they are very different from one another. Ambition is the feeling of wanting to do or achieve something constantly propelling us to push beyond the limits society imposes on everyone. While on the other hand desire is the feeling of needing something bringing about the darker side of achieving goals and desires. Desire brings about ideas like lust and greed and these issues are constantly affecting the way ambition drives us and the way desire aggressively pushes us. With the way society acts and expects us to act, behaviorally and mentally, the ways we see and use ambition and desire are constantly changing and molding right before our eyes. Great examples of society’s heavy impact on our paths to achievements are in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire showing how what happens around us will always affect people.
The first main factor to how life is pushed forwards is desire. This is the path to achievement that uses selfish deeds and greed to be able to obtain that goal. The way society functions and tells us how to live our lives greatly impacts our feeling of desire both individually and at the same time indirectly towards everyone else.
The first example of its impact would be the way we want to be seen by other people. In other words our appearance, both physically and emotionally, is constantly being pushed to these standards set by the community where one has to be both aesthetically pleasing and emotionally affable. This can be seen in A Streetcar Named Desire’s main character Blanche. She is at every moment of the play having a heavy worry about her beauty and appearance trying to fit this “ideal image” that is the image the world likes and wants. She needs this gorgeous feeling in order to feel good about herself which is one of the biggest negative impacts on this desire. When Stella is talking to Stanley she directly says, “And admire her dress and tell her she’s looking wonderful. That’s important to Blanche. Her little weakness!” and its more evident that this want to be beautiful becomes an addiction to the person afflicted and that its a weakness which can cause an eventual breakdown. Society’s rules on beauty make people feel the need to reach them unknowingly becoming dependent on them.
Another way society changes our desires is how we rise up to higher ranks and respected positions. The reason this becomes a matter of desire is because when it comes to gaining power in this world, mankind would be willing to do anything in order to get this position of high influence due to mere factors of greed. Societal expectations depict many ideas that push you to feel the need of achieving that higher plane like for example the american dream. The american dream creates the feeling of needing to get a job, find a wife, live a happy family life, and live the ideal luxury life. People want to achieve this dream at any cost by doing things like earning money through crime and bad deeds.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth depicts this curse of lust for power himself with the main character Macbeth. Macbeth at the beginning of the play isn’t affected much by his prophecy where he even waits to see what happens next. However, when he sees that he has his opportunity to fulfill this prophecy, he is filled with the desire to be king and gain power leading to his committing of the murder of King Duncan. Its even evident that he lost his sense of morality when he says right before killing Duncan,
“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.”
The expectations on becoming more powerful and gaining a higher rank in society becomes a major influence on what we desire even if you don’t notice it. It blinds those who are affected by it to what is more important which is the ambitions you have in order to rightfully achieve the goals you want.
The second way human behaviour and expectations affect our ambitions is a strong moral code that society sets in order to tell apart right from wrong. This moral code makes most people ambitious to stop any sort of unjust or wrong behavior that is around us. For example when most people see any sort of bullying, whether its physical or emotional, we feel a sense that there must be some intervention instead of just becoming a bystander. This is why many acts have been taken in order to ease and lower the amount of bullying that goes on. Macbeth does a great job at expressing this sort of feeling of moral code on a bigger scale through Macduff. He, being the one that takes down Macbeth, recognizes Macbeth’s evil deeds and unjust acts he committed in order to gain his role as king and also recognizes he simply isn’t fit for the position. So he takes action and goes to Malcolm, son of Duncan and rightful heir to the throne, for aid to stop Macbeth’s tyranny. He even expresses his discontent and hate towards Macbeth’s unrightful rule by saying ,
“Not in the legions of horrid hell can come a devil more damned in evils to top Macbeth".
Macduff has the ambition to have better rule in his own land of Scotland and only has the best interest of his land at heart. He wants to achieve this goal by doing what is seen as the right thing in this society, which is essentially don’t allow any sort of tyranny and if possible stop it. Ambition becomes the main engine to what we see as rightfully obtaining your goals even though ambition will always be related to desire.
Conclusio :
Thus, ambition is the root cause of Macbeth’s downfall, as it planted the seeds of murder, which grew into an uncontrollable monster that eventually destroyed anyone who got in its way.
Words count : 1783
No comments:
Post a Comment