Character Analysis of Macbeth in Shakespeare's Eponymous Play
Macbeth - Hunger & Humility Some say that when offered power, a man would do anything to get it. For example, when Hercules finds out he is a god he didn’t even know his own strength, and he used it in ways that other people didn’t believe were very helpful but soon proved them wrong when he grew up and became more mature and powerful. Hercules wanted to use his newfound power for the well-being of others; however, Macbeth had other plans for his use of power. In William Shakespeare’s tragic novel, Macbeth, a brilliant peacekeeper, Macbeth suffered from the same problem that befell many of the tragic Greek heroes like Oedipus. Despite his eager and insightful vision; he is unable to see himself or the future as clearly as he sees the battlefield before him. Macbeth proves in the story that he is a warrior model, ambitious, arrogant, and masculine all to a fault. Ambition, the hunger for the purpose-driven achievement, takes Macbeth to stunning extremes. At once intoxicated with his own slyness, he decides to stage a rebellion of his own, and to take the throne promised him by the Three Witches. Stoked by his wife’s ruthless passion, he reaches his high point - and melts down thereafter. “But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail. When Duncan is asleep where to the rather shall his day’s hard journey soundly invite him his two chamberlains will I with wine and wassail so convince that memory, the warder of the brain” (I.VII. 60-65). Hunger turned ruthless, he finds he has little taste for absolute murder in cold blood, no matter how many he has slain in his path. Confused and pressed towards action, he must engage in dishonesty following the discovery of Duncan’s death, leaving him caught up in self-doubt shortly after. His character has ambition, but lacked the ability to understand the trace of what acting on that ambition may have meant. Others, knowing him as they did, took advantage of him, leading Macbeth to go on a rampage.