FREE ESSAY ON MACBETH'S CRUELITY

MACBETH'S CRUELITY

The Macbeth's Cruelty
William Shakespeare's play Macbeth written in 1605-1606, is a brilliant and dramatic
piece of art about how the Scots and Macbeth butchered the whole Danish army. People set
high goals or purposes with significant meaning in Shakespeare's time. People back then
set their goals by working very hard to get better or getting done what they set out to
achieve. People did anything and everything to get a better job or get wealthier back
then. Many people told lies to their employer to advance in their jobs. Also, others
purposely did things to their fellow workers to get them in trouble so they could get
higher on the latter at work. The characters Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in the play did
everything wrong by believing the witches prophecies and becoming greedy to advance in
life by killing Duncan themselves. So, which was more ruthless Macbeth or Lady Macbeth?
In act I, Macbeth's tragic flaw is having too much ambition. He has indecision about
killing King Duncan because he says that he is his kin, Duncan is his guest, and the
aftermath of King Duncan's death will cause the people to go crazy and riots will break
out. But Lady Macbeth with such great visions of power and destruction persuades Macbeth
to kill Duncan. Macbeth now decides when he has to kill King Duncan because Duncan has
pronounced his son Malcolm to be next in line to be king. When Lady Macbeth finds out
about the witches prophecies, she sees that her husband could be king if he kills Duncan.
Once Macbeth finds out that the king wants to come to his house to eat and visit, he
thinks he should somehow go about getting rid of Duncan. Lady Macbeth thinks that Macbeth
is weak hearted and contains too much of "the milk of human kindness." She plans to take
control of his emotions and actions to help him if he plans to kill Duncan.
When King Duncan arrives, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth start planning a plot to kill him.
Macbeth begins to get cold feet about the plot to kill Duncan soon after. Lady Macbeth
takes on the role here as being the head of the family by forcing and convincing her
husband to go on with the plan. Once again, Macbeth is bothered by self-doubt from his
fear of retribution in heaven and on earth by getting his reputation shattered. Lady
Macbeth pours scorn upon Macbeth by his lack of courage. She says he is a coward and that
her own lack of pity will make her kill her own baby as it suckled at her breast, if
necessary. This statement and her powerful words convince Macbeth to carry out their plan
to kill Duncan. Finally, Macbeth gets up the courage and bravery to kill Duncan as he and
Lady Macbeth intend to do.
After Macbeth kills King Duncan, he starts to fear that someone might have seen or heard
him. Lady Macbeth, once again, comforts and helps him get through his fears and
frustration by her powerful words and actions. After Macbeth kills King Duncan, he brings
back the daggers that he meant to plant on the guards. Macbeth is scared about having
killed Duncan and cannot go back to plant the daggers because he is ashamed of what he
did. Once again, Lady Macbeth calms him down and goes back to plant the daggers herself.
Also, Macbeth believes that he has murdered sleep and that he will never again be able to
sleep easily and be at rest in his life. Lady Macbeth calms him down by her overpowering
words that the sleeping and the dead are only pictures and that everything in life seems
all right.
Even though the Macbeth family thought they could get away with murder to advance in life
to be the next king the guilty consciousness and fate determined to be the winning
factors that contributed to the downfall of Macbeth and his wife. Macbeth thought that he
could get away with murder until he went crazy about thinking of killing Duncan that he
tries to kill everyone else to get rid of whoever might stand in his way to be the next
king. Macbeth becomes so greedy about becoming king that he and his wife did evil deeds
to stop another from being in front of Macbeth. The guilty consciousness along with
insanity and greed killed not only Macbeth's character and soul, but his wife's too. Lady
Macbeth seems more ruthless because she takes on the persona of the head of the family
and over powers Macbeth's mind and soul. She wears Macbeth down both mentally and
physically by persuading him that everything bad he did there is a good to it. She also
tells Macbeth that the crimes they commit are not bad but will help them advance in life,
which was totally opposite of what occurs. Lady Macbeth displays much more ruthlessness
than Macbeth does.