Macbeth’s character Essay

It is a fair assessment of Macbeth’s character to call him nothing but a brutal and ruthless villain? In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macbeth is a very complex character showing many different traits in his many appearances throughout the play. The story starts after a battle; Macbeth then meets three witches who foresee that he will become King of Scotland. These witches knew all about Macbeth’s fatal flaw, his greed for power. This fatal flaw, as a typical tragic hero was the cause of his downfall. There is no doubt that throughout the play Macbeth is a brutal and ruthless villain, but it is certainly questionable to say that they are his only qualities Before Macbeth is even introduced to the audience, we are already told of his capacity for brutality. The captain describes Macbeth’s actions to the king when he says, â€Å"Like Valour’s minion, carved out his passage / Till he faced the slave.† The captain goes on to say, â€Å"Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, / Till he unseamed him from nave to chaps.† This statement also shows the brutality and barbarity of Macbeth’s character very well as he did not just end this mans life in an honourable and quick way, but instead sliced him all the way from his stomach to his jaw. Macbeth is also obviously very highly regarded among his colleagues and indeed enemies as being both brutal and brave, as the captain again says to Malcolm, â€Å"For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name)†, showing that others thought of him as a very brave man. There is a lot of irony in this point as at this point in the play, Macbeth is being very highly regarded as being brave and ruthless, whereas later on these same qualities will lose him all his respect. As the play unfolds Macbeth finds it increasingly easy to kill innocent people, which shows clearly the ruthlessness and the brutality of his character. The first person that Macbeth kills in the play is King Duncan. Shakespeare’s audience would have taken this particular crime of regicide very seriously as they believed in divine right, that the king was chosen from God and anyone who took that power away was defying God and it was the ultimate wrong. King James would have been very pleased at this element of the play, as it showed that any person who committed regicide suffered greatly as a consequence of it. Also the fact that Macbeth murdered a King while he was sleeping and was utterly defenceless would have been seen as being very dishonourable. The most innocent of all of Macbeth’s victims of his barbarity is Lady Macduff and her son. Macbeth’s other victims are all directly blocking his path to supreme power and so one could argue that they were necessary, but Lady Macduff and her family are just a precaution that Macbeth took to try and get to Macduff. . In the scene where Lady Macduff and her son are killed, the innocence of the child is emphasised in his language and the questions that he asks his mother. When his mother questions how he will live after his father’s death he replies, â€Å"As birds do, mother†, clearly showing his naivety and vulnerability. This further enhances the barbarity, as Macbeth’s victims were so unaware of Macduff’s business and also Macbeth was not even honourable enough to do the deed himself. Although Macbeth is unaware of his fatal flaw, he still acknowledges that he is becoming more and more ruthless as the story progresses. He uses a metaphor of a river of blood to clearly show how he feels inside. Macbeth says: â€Å"I am in blood Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.† By using this metaphor, Macbeth is saying that he has killed so many people now that it would be easier to carry on being ruthless and barbaric then to go back and repent. Macbeth is here admitting that he has done wrong and thinks of himself as a lost cause that has no hope of doing good ever again. Macbeth also says, â€Å"We are yet but young in deed†, suggesting that Macbeth sees the deeds he has committed so far as small in comparison to the deeds that he will commit in the future. Finally in Act Five Macbeth says that he has ‘forgotten the taste of fear, showing that because of the witches telling him that no man born of a woman can harm him, he does not fear anything anymore. The character that was the driving force behind all his wrong doings starting from the murder of King Duncan was Macbeth’s wife, Lady Macbeth. Therefore one would imagine that when she died, Macbeth would be devastated, but in reality when she does die Macbeth shows no remorse at all. When Seyton informs Macbeth that his wife is dead, all Macbeth can say is: â€Å"She should have died hereafter: There would have been a time for such a word – Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow†. In this Shakespeare is trying to emphasis just how much Macbeth has changed throughout the book, from going from a loving husband to not even caring about the death of his wife. It is almost as if Macbeth at this point is incapable of human emotions anymore, like he has turned into the beasts that first gave him these apparitions. Macbeth is an extreme tyrannical ruler of Scotland and chooses to rule with fear rather than ruling out of respect. When Malcolm and Macduff are describing Macbeth’s rule, they use personification to emphasise the amount of damage that Macbeth is doing to Scotland. Macduff says, â€Å"Bleed, bleed, poor country, / Great tyranny. Lay thou thy basis sure.† This makes Scotland’s suffering seem human and the use of personification enhances the bad feelings that the reader has for Macbeth and also the feelings that Scotland is a victim is enhanced. Macbeth’s brutality and ruthlessness leads to him being very short of loyal followers as they all disapprove of his tyrannical ruling methods. The few that do remain do so only out of fear of what Macbeth would do if they did not obey him. When Rosse and the messenger warn Lady Macduff that Macbeth’s murderers are on the way to kill them, Rosse says, â€Å"I am so much a fool, should I stay longer† and the messenger says, â€Å"I dare abide no longer†. These two statements clearly show the fear that these men have for their lives in disobeying Macbeth. The fact that even Macbeth’s own men fear him enhances the evil feeling that the reader has for Macbeth. Shakespeare strengthens the image that Macbeth is a ruthless villain by the opinions that others have for him. In Acts 4 and 5, the English leaders refer to Macbeth as a ‘butcher’, a ‘hell-hound’ and an ‘abhorred tyrant.’ This shows the disrespect that the neighbouring countries felt for Macbeth’s reign. Shakespeare also uses pathetic fallacy to emphasise the evilness of Macbeth’s crimes, when the porter says, â€Å"This place is too cold for hell. I’ll devil-porter it / no further,† this is quite an extreme statement showing that Macbeth’s castle is even worse than hell, indicating evil and wrong doing is present in some way. All this imagery is used by Shakespeare to further add to the evil feelings that the reader has for Macbeth’s crimes against the King. It can however be argued that Macbeth has certainly not been a brutal and ruthless villain all throughout the play. Before we even meet Macbeth we are presented with a view of him being a noble man as we are told this by the king when he describes Macbeth as a ‘valiant cousin!’ and a ‘worthy gentleman!’ The captain also says ‘brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name’. These two accounts of Macbeth clearly show both the Captain and the King’s respect for Macbeth. Shakespeare builds up Macbeth like this so that when he does fall, it will be so much greater. Macbeth’s first major crime is the murder of King Duncan. Although this in itself could definitely be seen as brutal and ruthless, Macbeth did show a lot of anxiety about performing the crime before and he did show a great deal of regret after the deed. Macbeth hears knocking after he has murdered Duncan and Macbeth says, â€Å"Wake Duncan with thy knocking: I would thou couldst,† it is apparent from this that Macbeth has certainly got a conscience, as he wished that he could reverse his actions. Shakespeare also uses a metaphor of blood on Macbeth’s hands to emphasise his guilt when Macbeth says: â€Å"Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand† Macbeth is experiencing the feeling that no matter what he does, he can never wash off the stain of his guilt. Macbeth is not the only one to blame for his crimes and had it not been for Lady Macbeth it could certainly be argued that Macbeth would not have acted on any of his ideas of murder. Lady Macbeth says that Macbeth is ‘too full o’ the milk of human kindness’, using the word ‘too’ to make it sound like it was a weakness on Macbeth’s part, showing that she feels Macbeth is too pleasant to be committing these types of crimes. Also Lady Macbeth uses all her powers of persuasion to get Macbeth to do what he wants. She questions his manhood, she uses flattery when she says, â€Å"And, to be more than you what you were, you would / Be so much more the man,† and she also uses emotional blackmail to twist Macbeth’s mind. With this constant source of irritation always near him, it is no wonder that he gave in in the end. It is not surprising that Macbeth eventually gave in to his wife as she is such a powerful and dominating character in the book Shakespeare re-enforces the idea of Lady Macbeth being powerful and evil when Lady Macbeth says: â€Å"Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here† This statement makes Lady Macbeth sound like the witches and therefore enhances her evilness and domination of Macbeth. Macbeth would not be considered ruthless and brutal had it not been for the forces of evil in the three witches. Macbeth was merely a puppet in their plan. They knew his weakness for power and used it against him. They told him exactly what he wanted to hear and that consequently led to the death of the king. Macbeth would have remained faithful to king and country, if the witches had not filled his head with thoughts that he could not escape. Therefore Macbeth was not the evil and villainous one, he was merely a victim of the witch’s evil. The evil in the witches is emphasised by Shakespeare’s use of pathetic fallacy. At the beginning of the play Shakespeare says in the stage directions ‘[Thunder and lightning]’, using pathetic fallacy to make the witches seem even wicked and their power emphasised as it almost seems that they have control over the weather. As there is so many factors that show that Macbeth is not just merely a brutal and ruthless villain, it would be wrong to call Macbeth ‘nothing but’ a villain. The very fact that Macbeth is a tragic hero is evidence in itself that Macbeth has the potential for good but is merely destroyed by his fatal flaw, because tragic hero’s have to start with power and respect and gradually lose that throughout the play. This is summed up perfectly in Act 4 Scene 3 when Malcolm says: â€Å"This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues, Was once thought honest: you have loved him well.† Despite all the crimes that Macbeth has committed, Malcolm is still saying that this was not always the case, showing further evidence that Macbeth is more than just a brutal and ruthless villain.