Consequences Of Ambition In Macbeth

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In the play Macbeth, Shakespeare illustrates gruesome consequences that come with being ambitious. From the beginning of the play, Macbeth does not possess a strong mentality. With ambition forced upon himself by his puppet master, Lady Macbeth, he is brainwashed to execute plans that are not his own. Through Macbeth, Shakespeare you learn the dangers of ambition that is forced upon us and being ambitious for the wrong reason. Macbeth first develops his desire to become king after being told an intriguing prophecy by the three witches. From there, Macbeth’s desire develops into his own a greater ambition of becoming not only Thane of Glamis, but the Thane of Cawdor and King. Perhaps at first Macbeth was selfish, but his former intention to gain the titles was good. After reading the letter Macbeth wrote of himself becoming King, Lady Macbeth immediately thinks to herself what a great opportunity it would be to become Queen. Because King Duncan was to stay with Macbeth and herself that same night, Lady Macbeth implanted the idea of murdering King Duncan for the “golden round”(1.5.31). Driven by Lady Macbeth’s selfishness and blinded by his desires, Macbeth allowed his own ambitions to be twisted by his own wife.…show more content…
Of course at first there was no official plan, and it certainly did not involve killing the King, let alone losing countless innocent lives. Instead of following his own intuition, he unknowingly succumbed to Lady Macbeth’s determination to murder the King. He was essentially pure pressured into murdering the King because his own wife believed he lacked bravery and called him a coward. After the deed was done, King Duncan was slain, Macbeth soon began having hallucinations of King Duncan in the form of a ghost and saw visions of the bloody dagger he had stabbed the King with. Poor Macbeth was slowly losing his

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