Macbeth's Ambition For King example essay topic

'Macbeth Essay' In the play Macbeth we see many common themes that do emerge. One of which is the theme of ambition which will at the end eventually lead to the death of the main character. We see this in the eventual death of both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. In this essay I hope to show the dominant theme of ambition and how it leads to the downfall of the main characters in the play. We first start to see Macbeth getting his ambition to become king in his quote when he says 'if chance will have me king, why chance may crown me, without my stir' (I..

34-37). Here we see that Macbeth is growing impatient and eager to become the king. He just doesn't want to sit back and wait for himself to be crowned and let destiny run it's course, he wants to be part of it when it happens, and he wants to be king right now. And this is when it all turns downhill.

He is starting to become very ambitious for the thrown. We will also soon see that he will stop at nothing short of killing the current king and he will even go so far as to kill one of his friends, and try to kill his son in order to try and become the new king. Next we see this theme again when Macbeth says 'Me thought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more, Macbeth does murder sleep,' the innocent sleep' (II. ii. 64-66). Here again we see Macbeth is starting to hear voices and he is starting to go a little crazy. Here is where things really start to head downhill, and they go down fast.

Because of Macbeth's ambition for king he has killed the current king. Now he thinks he is hearing voices that keep him from getting his sleep. And as we will later see, Macbeth will eventually die due to his over eager ambition to become the new king. The event of killing the king will set into play a whole chain of events that will soon show the downfall of Macbeth from his short lived thrown. On the other hand we can also see this ambition with Lady Macbeth. She also shows us the signs that she is getting over ambitious to become the new queen when she says 'Thou wouldst be great; Art not without Ambition, but without, the illness should attend it' (I. vs. 82-84).

Here we see that Lady Macbeth herself is trying to pursued Macbeth to kill the king. She herself is ambitious to become queen and if Macbeth will go and kill the king then Lady Macbeth will become the new queen. This is why she is trying to convince Macbeth to kill the king. When Lady Macbeth dies in the play she dies not from being killed but from her almost murdering herself mentally.

It is assumed that she could not believe what she had done, and all to just get the title of the queen. In conclusion we can see from all the quotes that Macbeth and his wife Lacy Macbeth are tow very ambitious characters and we also see that it is their fatal flaw. The thing that will lead to their death at the end of the play. If we had more time we could go into further depth and we can see that there are even more characters that will die due to their ambitiousness. So we can see that it is true that both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth died at the end of the play due to their over eager ambitions to become king and queen. This is the dominant theme that emerges from the Shakespearean play know today as Macbeth.