Do you have any sympathy at all for both, one or neither of the Macbeths?
In life everyone has goals that they hope to attain and there are many ways that one can achieve these goals. To achieve what you desire you can either wait for time to take its toll, or take matters into your own hands and do what you have to do in order to fulfil your desires. You can attain your goal as long as you have ambition. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth had the goal of Macbeth becoming king: to obtain this they took matters into hands and killed Duncan. In order for somebody to commit such a heinous act as murder the conspirators must be ruthless, and this is what Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were, ruthless. This ruthlessness provides little support, for any or some sympathy for the characters at the end of the play. Lady Macbeth is more ruthless than her husband and her ruthlessness is what fuelled the murder of Duncan. Her ruthlessness and power hunger led ambition is shown when she is first seen in the play at Act 1 Scene 5; the letter reading scene. In this scene Lady Macbeth comments on her thoughts after having read the letter from her husband, she knows that her husband who is 'too full o' th' milk of human kindness' (too kind and nice in other words) may have trouble facing up and having the
At this point I feel compassion for Macbeth for he is in a situation that he didn't really want to be in the first place but due to his wife hunger for power he was now standing with the blood of the king on his hands. I believe that Lady Macbeth, does honestly care for her husband because she is always saving him from revealing that they are Duncan's murderers, because after the murder, Macduff finds Duncan dead, Macbeth then starts to act suspiciously and draws attention to himself. It is then that Lady Macbeth has to help him out and draw the attention away from him and to her by fainting. She does this later too, during the banquet scene. Lady Macbeth is always there to clean up after Macbeth; Because of this I did feel a little compassion for Lady Macbeth at that point and don't think so badly of her. At this point even I have to admit that I feel a little sympathy for Lady Macbeth even after the evil deeds she did commit earlier in the play. Once mentally strong and powerful now she seems to be a depressed little woman on the verge of suicide. The Scene that I lost all sympathy for Macbeth is Act 4 Scene 2. In this Scene Macbeth sends murders out to murder in totally innocent family of Macduff. I thought, that doing this was completely not called for and those actions took away any last shred of sympathy I had for Macbeth. This brings up another aspect, Macbeths and Lady Macbeths relationship. The relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth is a very close one but a strange one. There are several things that Macbeth does not know about Lady Macbeth that she knows about him, for example she knows his weaknesses and the strength of his character. At the beginning of the play Lady Macbeth is the stronger of the two. Although it was the witches that told Macbeth predictions of him becoming king,
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Approximate Word count = 1742
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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