First In Macbeth And The Great Gatsby example essay topic

Often people believe in other forces that determine their lives, like fate or other forces. Fate is defined as "The supposed force, principle, or power that predetermines events". Though, many accept this concept that fate has an influence on their lives, Edmund, a character from William Shakespeare's King Lear disagrees: "This the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and teachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence". Edmund states the belief that our actions aren't decided by others, but from our own decisions. William Shakespeare's Macbeth and Scott F. Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby convey this theme through their literature. In Macbeth, the characters struggle with fate and decisions.

The weird Sisters set the mood and created the chaos when they prophesied, that Macbeth would be "Thane of Glam is, Thane of Candor, and shalt be king hereafter" (Act 1 Scene line). Though it's inevitable that this will happen, he starts to get impatient and comes across two choices. Either, let everything go on as normal or to kill Duncan and gain the thrown right away. Thomas Whately states, "Macbeth had no ambition for the crown until he heard the witches' prophecy". Whately is expressing that fate didn't get him to commit murders, but it was brought on by this curiosity of his future. Added to this new curiosity is Lady Macbeth, who is trying to persuade him to kill Duncan.

She offers the plan and full support, "His two chamberlains will I with wine and wassail so convince that memory, the warder of the brain, shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason a lim beck only. When in swinish sleep their drenched natures lies as in a death, what cannot you and I perform upon th " unguarded Duncan? What not put upon his spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt of our great quell". Yet, Macbeth has to make the final decision. Fate and all other forces might push him one way, but he has to decide what action to take. Though you can blame Lady Macbeth for pushing him and the prophecy from the Weird Sisters, Macbeth made the decision and all the consequences that came with it.

Ambition, curiosity, and desires brought his final decision to kill Duncan. Unlike Macbeth, Lady Macbeth tries to use supernatural force in his favor by justifying the desire to kill Duncan, "The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlement". She called upon the spirits to make her evil, and able to kill, but it wasn't this spirit that suddenly gave the power her to kill. That part of her that wants to be a murderer is what was already necessary to become a murderer. In "Some Character-types Met With In Psycho-analytical Work" by Sigmund Freud "We to infer that even in Lady Macbeth an originally gentle and womanly nature had been worked up to a concentration and high tension which could not endure for long, or ought we to seek for signs of a deeper motivation which will make this collapse more humanly intelligible to us?" Freud is arguing that Lady Macbeth may have been known as a gentle woman, but it is hard to completely believe that when she is capable of killing. Though, it seems that spirits had to with Lady Macbeth's change of character, it just seems to be a justification for her actions.

Macbeth began to feel guilt and fear that he would be found out. These inner emotions made his decision to kill his best friend Banque. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth made all these choices by using murder and betrayal, which led to his downfall not because of fate, but because fate is made up by choices you make. "The murders he commits after Duncan's death are motivated by a fearful insecurity, not, by intervention of a supernatural cause (Whately)". In The Great Gatsby, some of the characters blame one another for their unhappiness. Daisy is the rich girl, who is unhappy with her life.

She complains about her husband and his cheating on him but the choices she made put her in that position. She loved Gatsby ant one point in her life, but she said couldn't marry anyone who was poor like Gatsby was at the time. So, she decided to marry for money instead of love. "Daisy's charm is allied to the attraction of wealth" (Lewis 50). The reader becomes sympathetic of Daisy's character with her being married to Tom Buchanan, an ignorant and immoral husband. Though she knows what type of person he is she still stays with him.

For Daisy, "pursuit of money is a substitute for love". It is apparent that this is the life she chooses when she let Gatsby take the blame for her actions. It was her desire to be well off and privileged that made up her life not another supernatural force that persuaded her to marry Tom. Gatsby's ambition and oblivion created his demise. The reader sympathizes with Gatsby because of his na " ive nature and his charming personality, but he makes his living as a criminal.

Gatsby was "a boor a roughneck a fraud, a criminal. His taste vulgar, his behavior ostentatious, his love adolescent, his business dealings ruthless and dishonest" (Scrmingeour 73). Yet, we root for Gatsby and hate Daisy and Tom. Though Daisy and Tom did leave Gatsby the blame for Myrtle's death, he made choices that led to his downfall anyway.

He pursued a married woman, Daisy and thinking that he could have everything he wanted. This arrogant attitude of everything will be mine led to as much to his fall as the lie told by Tom. As well as determination, his youthful fantasy had to with it also. "He lives in a childish tissue of lies and is unaware of the existence of an independent reality which other people have separate existences... As soon as Daisy's independent will enters the dream, Gatsby is forced to attach himself to the real world, to lose his freedom of action, and to pay the penalty of denying the past in having that past destroy the romantic present" (Scrimingeour 50). He chooses to have his life have a lack of focus on reality.

His blind ambition which he chooses to become was the main factor of the consequences that occurred to him, not entirely from other people. At first in Macbeth and The Great Gatsby, it seems as though other forces or people really made them become who they are, but choices that were made are what influences their character and lives. Supernatural forces or other people can be blamed for a lot of choices made, but the final decision is made by that person.