Themes Flashcards
Ambition
The weird sisters’ prophecies spur both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to try to fulfill their ambitions, but the witches never make Macbeth or his wife do anything.
Macbeth, a good general and, by all accounts before the action of the play, a good man, allows his ambition to overwhelm him and becomes a murdering, paranoid maniac. Lady Macbeth, once she begins to put into actions the oncehidden thoughts of her mind, is crushed by guilt
Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth want to be great and powerful, and sacrifice their morals to achieve that goal. By contrasting these two characters with others in the play, such
as Banquo, Duncan, and Macduff, who also want to be great leaders but refuse to allow ambition to come before honor, Macbeth shows how naked ambition, freed from any sort of moral or social conscience, ultimately takes over every other characteristic of a person
Fate
Unlike Banquo, Macbeth acts: he kills Duncan. Macbeth tries to master fate, to make fate conform to exactly what he wants.
But, of course, fate doesn’t work that way.
Macbeth puts himself in the position of having to master fate always. At every instant, he has to struggle against those parts of the witches’ prophecies that don’t favor him. Ultimately, Macbeth becomes so obsessed with his fate that he becomes delusional: he becomes unable to see the half-truths behind the witches’ prophecies. By trying to master fate, he brings himself to ruin.
Nature and the Unnatural
In medieval times, it was believed that the health of a country was directly related to the goodness and moral legitimacy of its king. If the King was good and just, then the nation would have good harvests and good weather. If there was political order, then there would be natural order.
Macbeth shows this connection between the
political and natural world: when Macbeth disrupts the social and political order by murdering Duncan and usurping the
throne, nature goes haywire. Incredible storms rage, the earth tremors, animals go insane and eat each other. The unnatural
events of the physical world emphasize the horror of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s acts, and mirrors the warping of their souls by ambition.
Duncan and Malcolm use nature metaphors when they speak of kingship—they see themselves as gardeners and want to make their realm grow and flower. In contrast,
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth either try to hide from nature (wishing the stars would disappear) or to use nature to hide
their cruel designs (being the serpent hiding beneath the innocent flower). The implication is that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, once they’ve given themselves to the extreme
selfishness of ambition, have themselves become unnatural.
Manhood
Over and over again in Macbeth, characters discuss or debate about manhood: Lady Macbeth challenges Macbeth when he decides not to kill Duncan, Banquo refuses to join Macbeth in his plot, Lady Macduff questions Macduff’s decision to go to England, and on and on.
Through these challenges, Macbeth questions and examines manhood itself. Does a true man take what he wants no matter what it is, as Lady Macbeth believes? Or does a real man have the strength to restrain his desires, as Banquo believes? All of Macbeth can be seen as a struggle to answer this question about the nature and responsibilities of manhood.
Chain of Being
The hierarchical structure of all matter and life, thought by medieval Christianity to have been decreed by God. When Macbeth kills King Duncan, he disrupts the Chain of Being, and his attempt to replace King Duncan in the heirarchy causes chaotic implications in Scotland.
Loyalty
There is a reverence and respect for loyalty in Macbeth. It is a recurring idea that those who stay loyal are rewarded and/or respected. For example, Banquo. Although he did not escape the violence of Macbeth’s reign, they are given justice within the play and their deaths are never unanswered for.
Manipulative nature of Women
Lady Macbeth is portrayed as the devil whispering in Macbeth’s ear. Lady Macbeth is ambitious, and projects this onto Macbeth by manipulating him into acting upon her desires. She is juxtaposed against Lady Macduff who encapsulates all the conventional behaviours that were part of female discourse in Elizabethan times.
