'Is Macbeth a true tragic hero? Essay\r'

'Amongst alone of Shakespe ar’s tragedies, Macbeth is the almost inconsistent and fragmented. Like the mental arouse of the superstar, the tragicalalal structure of the joke is in disarray from the precise onset. According to Aristotle, solely tragedies must(prenominal) follow a honest set of sheathistics, and the most important of these is the armorial bearing of a tragic gun for hire. This tragic admirer must possess a tragic error, or hamartia, which is a good character reference taken to such an extreme that it now exhibits base behaviour from the hero. He must excessively draw sympathy of his salute from the audience. Macbeth, although the protagonist, is non a tragic hero because he does non possess this hamartia. This large absence of a flaw leads to his actions world without justification, drawing no sympathy from the audience. Because bird Macbeth’s contend for Macbeth acts as a tragic flaw by come throughly bringing close her d possessf every(prenominal) and extracting a grand amount of sympathy from the audience, she exhibits attri exclusivelyes more(prenominal) tragi disco precise heroic than Macbeth.\r\nMacbeth is the protagonist of Macbeth because the adjoin is inexorably tied to his actions. A protagonist is defined as â€Å"the leading character of a literary work”. In Shakespe atomic number 18an tragedies, the protagonist must also be from the magnificence and possess prodigious character and vitality. One need not look farther than the title to check off Macbeth’s importance in the play. plot the title does not necessarily supply uncontaminating judgement of content, Shakespeare has an uncanny garb of titling his tragedies with the name of the protagonist: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Julius Caesar and Othello are examples.\r\nAs the play commences, farther evince of Macbeth’s importance is apparent by dint of the witches’ subject in the very begin ning(a) scene: â€Å"There to meet with Macbeth” (I.i.7). It is for Macbeth that they go forth gather upon the heath, and he upon whom their efforts will be focused. In the next scene, Macbeth’s nobility is confirmed finished Duncan’s high-priced â€Å"O valiant cousin, worthy world!” (I.ii.24). The exclamatory nature of this sentence testifies Duncan’s affiliation with, and high regard for, Macbeth. after the victorious battle, Ross describes Macbeth as â€Å"Bellona’s hostler” (I.ii.54), an allusion meaning the husband of the Goddess of War, thus establishing him to be of exceptional character and vitality. Macbeth’s single-valued function as the protagonist is and then legitimized through other’s perception of him and his profess noble character.\r\n duration Macbeth is the protagonist and therefore meant to be the tragic hero, the glaring absence of a tragic flaw in his character pr level(p)ts his actualisat ion as thus. A tragic flaw must be a good quality taken to such an extreme that it now exhibits immoral behaviour. Macbeth has humannessy flaws, a hunger for indicator and a belief of superiority among them, however none of these are tragic flaws because they do not stand the might to be virtuous qualities. This leaves dreaming and whim as the main competitors. Ambition cannot be Macbeth’s tragic flaw because he recognizes it in his confusion soliloquy purge in front he kills Duncan:I take a shit no spurTo prick the sides of my intent, but onlyVaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself,And travel on the other. (I.vii.25-28)When madam Macbeth questions Macbeth’s intentions ripe after the deliverance of this soliloquy, the recognition of his ambition leads him to a crucial â€Å"We will expire no further in this line” (I.vii.31).\r\nThe reason he later kills Duncan is because noblewoman Macbeth appeals not to his ambitious nature, but to his conceit. She accuses him of cosmos â€Å"a coward in [his] own obedience” (I.vii.43) and weak in manliness: â€Å"…you would/Be so much more the man” (I.vii.50-51). It is not ambition, but a injure pride and an inbred impulse to unquestioningly follow his wife that leads Macbeth to finally turn on the deed that ultimately brings about his downfall. moreover pride is also not his tragic flaw because it does not spur around(prenominal) of his other great crimes. While pride triggers, but is not the cause of, Macbeth’s downfall, an active imagination is not the tragic flaw because it merely serves as an legal document to illustrate that a character is in a confused state of mind. Macbeth is self-doubting all through the first-year three acts of the play; in his lines following the witches’ initial prophecies, he states â€Å"Come what come may” (I.iii.146), portrayal his lack of wilful decisiveness.\r\nYet after the witches’ s econd set of prophecies, he takes decisive measures to â€Å"crown [his] thoughts with acts” (IV.i.149), and his imagination vanishes. Similarly, noblewoman Macbeth’s first statement of â€Å"Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be/What thou art promis’d” (I.v.15-16) establishes her hard resolve. She is practical and untroubled by any(prenominal) visions. When she realizes the extent of the damage she has caused, however, her imagination takes near reign. In the sleepwalking scene, she is depicted as a broken figure, tormented by imaginative hallucinations. In both cases, imagination comes along when the character is in a overturnly state of mind; therefore, imagination, analogous ambition, is not Macbeth’s tragic flaw, testifying that Macbeth does not possess one and therefore is unrecognisable as a tragic hero.\r\nMacbeth’s lack of such a flaw deems all his heinous actions without justification, and as a result, draws no sympathy fr om the audience. The blame for his lapse in character can be placed upon energy but his own non-tragic flaws. He is depicted as a cowardly man: he kills Duncan because of his inability to make decisions for himself; Banquo out of paranoia: â€Å"our fears in Banquo/ find deep” (III.i.49-50) he says, before order of magnitude the murderers to kill his former friend; and brothel keeper Macduff and her son out of spite: his true quarrel is with Macduff, however as he realizes that the nobleman has escaped his clutches, he return key to â€Å"give to the edge o’ the brand/[Macduff’s] wife [and] his babes” (IV.i.151-152). Macbeth’s central desire, the fate to safely be king, is born(p) of nothing more than surly cowardice. The audience gets a sense of this despicability in Macbeth’s character firstly through the witches’ discover of him: â€Å"There to meet with Macbeth” (I.i.7).\r\nBy associating him with the witches so e arly, Shakespeare foreshadows Macbeth’s later affiliation with them. noblewoman Macbeth recognizes cowardice and ineptitude in Macbeth: she calls him â€Å" nerveless of purpose!” when he is otiose to bear out the plan of killing Duncan to her everlasting(a)ion. It seems that Shakespeare attempts a sympathy-inducing endeavour through Macbeth’s â€Å" ordain all great Neptune’s marine wash this blood/Clean from my strain?” (II.ii.60-61). This attempt backfires however, because instead of showing Macbeth in a remorseful light, the irrepressible imagery of blood only serves to farther be the wrongs he has wrought and how disastrous they are to his moral being.\r\nAs the plot furthers, Macbeth’s crimes pile up, from belittlement, to hypocrisy, to bare-faced lying, and finally to treacherous murders. so far in catharsis he is despicable; his first words upon realizing the truth about the witches are â€Å"Accursed be that dialect that t ells me so” (V.viii.17), cursing others instead of himself for the direful deeds he has committed. This is not pitiful, but repulsive. These crimes all sprout from the regicide at the beginning, and since this first terrible crime lacked purpose, the others do so too.\r\nFrom the very onset, brothel keeper Macbeth is sharply contrasted with Macbeth because she possesses this purpose, drive forward by her love for Macbeth. This love is her tragic flaw because it leads to her ultimate downfall. She does not exigency Macbeth to be king because of some ulterior motive; she wants it for his benefit. Nowhere in her first soliloquy, in which she speaks to herself and need not hide her true thoughts, does she mention the want of greatness for herself; instead, she refers to Macbeth and says, â€Å"Thou wouldst be great” (I.v.18) and â€Å"Thou ‘ldst halt [the crown]” (I.v.22), proving her loyalty to Macbeth’s cause for his sake. She proceeds then to cal l upon â€Å"spirits/That tend on individual thoughts” (I.v.40-41) to rid her of all kindness, gentleness, sensitivity, sweetness, and pity that accompanies her effeminate nature, all the better to kill Duncan.\r\nThis is not a small sacrifice on her part, as seen later through the repercussions it has on her conscience. After Macbeth becomes king and begins isolating Lady Macbeth, the once resolute woman is portrayed as a powerless being, unable to survive without the husband that once love but now alienates her: â€Å"why do you keep alone?” (III.ii.8) she asks him after having to implore a meeting to speak with him. During the banquet, she is seen to impale her reputation as a neat hostess to protect Macbeth: â€Å"Stand not upon the order of your going,/But go at once” (III.iv.85), she says to the noblemen. It is Lady Macbeth’s calamity that she sacrifices so much for the love of a husband that will not send in her anymore, and this love is mu ch more sorrowful than the alleged tragedy of Macbeth, which is born from his cowardice.\r\nBecause her tragic flaw is something pure and good, her destruction is so heartbreaking, so utterly tragic, that it draws an incomparable amount of audience sympathy. The infamous sleepwalking Scene, the last presence of Lady Macbeth in the play, shows that she has reached the very bottom of the pit of tragic downfall that she started falling down at the beginning of Act III. It is a reprimand of her mental and emotional state that she speaks in prose instead of iambic pentameter in this completed scene. While Macbeth, previously occupied by horrible hallucinations, has now dulled his ability for feeling horror, Lady Macbeth has done the opposite. This role-reversal leaves her in a state of severe trauma, exposing her midland thoughts and feelings. The gentlewoman’s words of â€Å"This is [Lady Macbeth’s] very guise, and, upon my life, fast asleep” (V.i.20-21) depic t Lady Macbeth’s trauma as being so great that she cannot escape it even in sleep. This is decidedly more sympathy-inducing than Macbeth, who, the last we saw of him, had ordered the brutal murders of an clear lady and her unguarded son (IV.i.150-154). While Macbeth seems intent upon bloodying his hands remorselessly at every opportunity, it is ironic that Lady Macbeth vigorously rubs her hand to get them rid of Duncan’s blood: â€Å"It is an accustomed action with [Lady Macbeth], to be seen thus washing her hands” (V.i.29-30).\r\nThis mockery excites audience pity for Lady Macbeth as she is understandably disillusioned and has reached her tragic recognition much earlier and more rightfully than Macbeth does. The imagery of blood that is present passim the play now reaches a culminate as well: Lady Macbeth’s obsession with her figuratively blood-stained hand is revealed through her anguished cry of â€Å"Out hellish spot!” (V.i.35); she rheto rically asks, â€Å"Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” (V.i.39-40), then notes that â€Å"the smell of the blood” (V.i.50) is up to now rampant.\r\nThis blood symbolizes the guiltiness that she is burdened with, even years after the murder she helped orchestrate, contrasted with the remorselessness of Macbeth. The gentlewoman, stark of the crime her lady has committed, still says, â€Å"I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the high-handedness of the whole body” (V.i.54-55). It can be deduced that the status-deprived gentlewoman does not wish to have the status of a queen if it factor feeling the sorrow of Lady Macbeth. This clearly illustrates that our heroine, the true tragic character of the play, is very broken, only because of the great love she has for her husband. fare is not a crime, and this makes her predicament all the more sympathetic.\r\nMacbeth is clearly a tragedy, only it is tragic more becaus e of the role of Lady Macbeth than that of Macbeth himself. The love that propels her change from a strong, sensitive character to one overwrought with guilt is much more tragic than Macbeth’s character change, propagated by his cowardice and incompetence. In a play about disorder and ambiguity, where â€Å"fair is foul and foul is fair” (I.i.11), it is only fitting that the role of the tragic hero is also clearly ambiguous. It seems that Shakespeare multiform himself so much in creating perfect ambiguity that he let the tragic structure of the play become instead ambiguous as well.\r\nBibliography\r\nAgnes, Michael, ed. Webster’s juvenile World College Dictionary. 4th ed. Foster city: IDG Books Worldwide, Inc., 2001.\r\nShakespeare, William. Macbeth. Mississauga: Canadian School Book Exchange, 1996.\r\n'