Sunday, October 20, 2013

From the Crown to the Toe


At this point in Macbeth, Lady Macbeth has just found out that her husband Macbeth has been promoted after all of his brave deeds in the battles.  Also Macbeth writes about how three witches that he encountered all praised him for his accomplishments, but it was interesting how he was called by a different name by each one.  One witch calls him the Thane of Cawdor, Thane of Glamis, and also called a king.  However, he is really the Thane of Cawdor, but he did not know that he was going to be promoted, so he believed that the one witch was predicting the future. 


Macbeth is happy and he believes that he has a good future ahead of him because he thinks that he could become king.  However, Lady Macbeth knows that he would not be powerful enough to overthrow the king since he is too nice.  Based off of this idea, she writes how she can become evil and become a killer in order to overthrow the king, so she writes “from the crown to the toe, top-full of direst cruelty.”  By saying this, she is showing that she just wants Macbeth to be king by all means necessary, which would include killing the king and his heirs.  I feel that this is very interesting because now Macbeth’s actions seem like they will be driven by Lady Macbeth’s ideas.  She will want to constantly achieve higher power, so it will create mayhem between Macbeth and her, in addition to people whose lives are at risk.

3 comments:

  1. I think you raise some interesting points. I immediately thought "Is this what Lady Macbeth really wants for her husband? Is she performing these actions for herself or for her husband's happiness?" when I read your response. I agree with your statement that there will be mayhem and conflict between Macbeth and his lady, but we'll just have to wait and see.

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  2. I agree with your comment about Lady Macbeth driving Macbeth's ideas. It's an interesting point. Especially because you'd think that Lady Macbeth would not be such a driving force in this particular story when Macbeth is regarded as a strong and important man.

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  3. I find how you think that Macbeth's actions being controlled by Lady Macbeth really disturbing because it's probably true. Macbeth is also probably way too nice to deny his wife's orders and they will probably have some sort of conflict in the future as you said.

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