A tragic flaw is defined as a character flaw that ultimately leads to the character’s downfall. One of the most iconic examples of how a tragic flaw leads to a character's downfall is in the drama, Macbeth. Macbeth is a drama written by William Shakespeare that follows the actions and consequences of the protagonist, Macbeth after he kills the king. After Macbeth kills the king, his whole world spirals and he finds himself unable to control his lust for power. He then does everything that he deems necessary to remain in control of the kingdom. However, the question of what ultimately leads to Macbeth channeling his tragic flaw is one that is highly debated. Some people believe that Lady Macbeth, Macbeth’s wife, is responsible for Macbeth’s …show more content…
She excuses his strange behavior to everyone else by saying “My lord is often thus and hath been from his youth ”(Shakespeare 3.4. 56-57.) and then further reassures them by saying “this fit is momentary; upon a thought he will be well again.”(Shakespeare 3.4.58-59.) This act of excusing Macbeth’s behavior leads him to go mad with grief. When Macbeth learns later in the play that Lady Macbeth has committed suicide, he finally decides that he can no longer live with the remorse that is inside of him. He accepts MacDuff’s challenge to a fight, one he knows is not in his favor, and ultimately sacrifices himself for the greater good of the kingdom. This act of self-sacrifice is the climax of the play and is what shows that Macbeth is accepting the responsibility for his …show more content…
Without Lady Macbeth and her scheming that lead to the first murder being committed, none of the rest of the play would have ever happened. Lady Macbeth’s constant encouraging and nagging on Macbeth is what causes him to go through with an assassination plan that he never wanted to go through in the first place. After the first murder is committed, Macbeth finds himself unable to stop in his lust for power. After murdering his best friend, Banquo, Macbeth starts to feel guilty and expresses his guilt to a room full of people at a dinner party, this expression is quickly thwarted by Lady Macbeth’s excuses that Macbeth has been like this ever since childhood. Without the actions of Lady Macbeth, Macbeth’s tragic flaw never would have seen the light of day, and the story of Macbeth would never have been
Characters with tragic flaws are characters that decide their fate based on a decision they made during their life. Shakespeare loved to use characters with tragic flaws in his drama, Romeo, and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet is about 2 lovers of different families that hate each other fall in love and their love leads to their death. Romeo and Juliet has so many characters with tragic flaws, but the ones that stick out the most are Romeo, a impulsive lover and his love tragedy, Tybalt, a hostile swordsman, and his hate for another family causes his death, and Mercutio, a cheerful friend of Romeo and his overprotective flaw. Romeo’s tragic flaw is his love life, which leads his carless death.
Macbeth is no longer an honest, innocent husband, as he was in the beginning. Macbeth has completed his transition from an honest and caring leader, into a cold, heartless individual, which is shown when he voices: “She should have died hereafter / There would have been a time for such a word.” (V.v.17-18) Macbeth is informed about his wife’s suicide, and shows absolutely no remorse, which shows how heartless he has become.
Lady Macbeth orders a servant to fetch Macbeth and before he arrives, she bemoans “Naught’s had, all’s spent, Where our desire is got without content,” indicating that even though she has gotten everything she wants, Lady Macbeth is still not happy because she had to kill to get what she wanted. According to Edith Whitehurst Williams, Lady Macbeth has “a conscience far from dead” that is seen in how she is not happy despite having the power she wanted, since the means of obtaining that power were unsavory (Williams 222). Once Macbeth arrives, Lady Macbeth consults him, advising that “what’s done is done,” meaning that Duncan is dead and their plan is through, so he does not need to do anything more or kill anyone else (3.2.12). Macbeth can sense that Lady Macbeth will not advocate for any more murders and therefore he “does not make her a party to the murder of Banquo” (Williams 222) and so when Lady Macbeth tells him to “sleek o’er your rugged looks”(3.2.27) in order to stop him from his planning of further murders, he simply agrees. At the banquet where Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost, after everyone has left, Macbeth is talking about how he has more schemes to kill people, it is seen that Lady Macbeth’s “dedications to evil… [are] not going to sustain her”(Williams 222).
Lady Macbeth plans to invite king Duncan over for dinner, but really she is convincing Macbeth to murder him. She influences him to kill Duncan because he is the only one standing in the way of Macbeth becoming king. Lady Macbeth plans the killing but convinces Macbeth to do the dirty deed. Lastly, Lady Macbeth is one of the causes of Macbeth’s failure because she repeatedly questions Macbeth’s manhood until she persuades him to make a bad choice. “When you durst do it then you were a man” (1.7.53-58).
Near the end of the play, Macbeth begins to forget the brave and valiant soldier he was as he tells Macduff that he will "not fight with thee" (Act5:8:22) when he is realises that Macduff was foretold to be the one to slay him. His own arrogance then comes into play as he says that he "will not yield" (Act5:8:27) because he refuses to become the laughingstock of the common people. This also shows the reversal
Word Count:697 Consequences of Choices While the motivating factor of people's choices are all different, their decision they make, is what determines the consequences. In the play 'Macbeth,' we see how Macbeth's poor decisions and lack of character leads to his tragic death. Because of Macbeth's decision to kill Duncan, his decision to assassinate Banquo, and his decision to visit the witches, the consequences of his actions lead to his death. Macbeth's decision to have Duncan killed, leads to consequences that cause his downfall.
Often times, people go through rises and downfalls in their lives that they themselves are responsible for. In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, both main characters, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, himself, are responsible for the downfall of Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is responsible for the tragedy because she convinces and manipulates Macbeth into doing the deed. However, Shakespeare accomplishes in showing that Macbeth is more responsible for his own downfall than Lady Macbeth because he listens to the witches and follows his ambition rather than his conscience. To begin, Lady Macbeth is responsible for the tragedy because she convinces and manipulates Macbeth into doing the deed by insulting him when he changes his mind.
Shakespeare's tragedy, Macbeth, analyzes the tragic downfall of a man who pursued his prophecy given to him by three witches, and suffered the downfall because of it. Told his power was inevitable, Macbeth explores the idea of murdering the King to achieve his goal of becoming King himself. Macbeth continually faces this, contemplating the moral issue of committing murder to in turn, fulfill his powerful destiny. While facing this internal conflict, Lady Macbeth developes an influence over Macbeth as well. Driven by her own desire to be Queen, Lady Macbeth persuades Macbeth to commit the murder, by challenging his manhood and often reminding him that it is, in fact, his destiny.
Even Macbeth himself accepts responsibility for the act, “I’ll go no more: I am afraid to think what I have done; Look on't again I dare not.” (2.2.51-53) Despite the fact that he is convinced he is taking the right course of action, directly following the act he regrets it. He does not blame Lady Macbeth for he knows he is to blame, and she is forced metaphorically clean up his mess by making a mess of the
He realizes he has “fallen from grace”, the world would be against him since he had destroyed the Elizabethan order. He does not see any meaning in life and therefore detaching himself from his emotions to turn himself into a vicious murderer. Macbeth’s despair over the loss of meaning in his life is reinforced in his Act 5 Scene 5 soliloquy, where he says life “is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/ Signifying nothing” (Act 5 Scene 5 lines 25-27). Macbeth comes to a point of realization that all his efforts to gain the throne are like the “sound and fury” of the tale, just acts crafted for the sake of the show without any actual outcome in the end. In exchange for kingship, he loses his “milk of human kindness” and his wife.
‘Macbeth’s ambition is his only weakness’. Do you agree? Macbeth’s greatest weakness is his ambition, but it is also his greatest strength. Despite his ambition being one of his major weaknesses, it is not his sole weakness he exhibits that contributes to his inevitable death.
It is clear that it was Macbeth’s fault for his downfall because of he, himself chose the wrong path. He had the choice of avoiding people but, he did not even after feeling guilty of what he did. Macbeth’s downfall in life cannot be blamed on anyone else, but
Lady Macbeth tries to mask her guilt by covering up for her husband, but eventually comes to grips with her own instability. In Macbeth, Shakespeare asserts that power drives the title character and his wife to insanity, particularly after their conspiracy to kill Duncan. For starters, prior to killing Duncan, Macbeth imagines the likely consequences of his future actions and whether or not they signal his destiny. At the beginning
William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, the main character; Macbeth, is seen as an evil character. The play is based off of Macbeth’s decisions and his actions to become King. In the beginning Macbeth starts out as a hero in Scotland’s war with Ireland and towards the end he is transformed into a murderer. Macbeth is not wholly evil because of is heroism in the war, his love for Scotland, and because he didn’t want to kill King Duncan initially. Macbeth was brain washed by his wife and tricked into killing the King.
The Tragedy of Macbeth- Downfall Throughout the Macbeth play, Macbeth himself is a very dynamic character. Macbeth changes more than any other character in the play. With Macbeth being such a dynamic character, it causes him to have a tremendous downfall as a person. The three main causes of his downfall is his wife’s persuasion to kill the king, trying to cover up his actions, and having people killed just to try to keep his role as the king.