Lady Macbeth's Downfall

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Macbeth is a play all about madness and susceptibility to evil, and Macbeth himself is the paragon of both. Being the protagonist, and thus whose story we focus on, Macbeth comes into contact with a lot of influences that contribute to his admittedly weak minded nature. Lady Macbeth is the most prominent influence on Macbeth, she is a driving force behind most of his actions during the play. Lady Macbeth, an outside factor, with her manipulative mind and great ambition, was the greatest factor that contributed to the tragic downfall of Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is an ambitious being at heart, she wants to rise to the top of any metaphorical food chain she is faced with. Macbeth needs to be coerced from his comfortable spot in the chain of command,…show more content…
He rants at an empty chair, to the hallucinatory ghost of Banquo, and makes a spectacle of himself in front of important guests. “But now they rise again With twenty mortal murders on their crowns And push us from our stools. This is more strange Than such a murder is.” (2.4.83) Lady Macbeth, understandingly, is having none of that. She’s just managed to shove herself and her husband into a comfy position as monarchs, and having him raving about someone he’s just had killed is not doing anything to solidify their position in the trust of the nobles sitting at their table. “Are you a man?” (2.4.58) Lady Macbeth challenges her husband on his vanity and his pride as a man, manipulating him further to bottling up his madness. Of course, that hardly works as she expects, and attempting to bottle his failing mind only causes it to spill over and causes him to become irrational at best and insane at worst, mostly at later dates, like at the bit where he seeks out the witches and he gains their masters wisdom “Thou are too like the spirit of Banquo. Down! Thy crown does sear mine eyeballs.”(4.1.112). This marks his most obvious descent within his tragic…show more content…
“I bear a charmed life, which must not yield to one of women born” (5.7.12) This conviction, this total disregard for logical reasoning, comes from Lady Macbeth. She was the one who convinced him to kill whoever he had to in order to become king, Duncan, Banquo, the servants, and now Macduff. “Hie thee hither, That I may pour my spirits in thine ear And chastise with the valor of my tongue All that impedes thee from the golden round, Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem To have thee crowned withal.” (1.5.15) She convinced him to do this on only the second hand message of a witches prophecy, and that is the greatest point of influence she has on him, even after death. His tragic downfall is a consequence of her manipulation and
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