Skip to main content

What does Macbeth reveal about the human condition?

There are many ideas that run through Macbeth that reveal ideas about the human condition. I'll give you a couple of ideas:


1. The desire for more.


Macbeth is a play about a man who to be king. He initially disregards the appearance of the witches he encounters ("You should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are so.") and is startled by the prediction that he will be the king. When the witches show that they'll leave, Macbeth begs them to stay and "tell me more." Even Banquo, who acts as a foil to Macbeth for most of the play, initially responds positively to the witches' prediction that his sons will be kings and asks whether he and Macbeth have eaten "on the insane root." This characteristic is present throughout the play in Macbeth's (and Lady Macbeth's) actions.


2. A desire to surpass boundaries


While Macbeth wants to be king after the witches tell him it will be so, Lady Macbeth wants to move beyond the barriers placed before her because she's a woman. Lady Macbeth pushes Macbeth to murder Duncan and claim the crown because, as a woman, she is unable to do so. In one of her more famous speeches, Lady Macbeth begs "unsex me here." Lady Macbeth wants to move beyond the social expectations of women, particularly motherly tenderness and kindness. Lady Macbeth pushes Macbeth to murder, practically calling him a coward when he says he does not want to go through with the murder: "What beast was't, then, / That made you break this enterprise to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man."


There are many other examples of the human experience in Macbeth, and I'm sure other educators can add some below. These are two of the most obvious ones and two of the ones in which you'll probably find the most evidence.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more