Skip to main content

Why is Macbeth unlucky?

It could be argued that Macbeth makes poor decisions more than that he is unlucky, but he encounters an element of poor luck at two crucial moments early in the play. First, it is a stroke of bad luck that he discovers he has become Thane of Cawdor right after his encounter with the witches, who prophecy he will be Thane of Cawdor and greet him by that name. This leads Macbeth to put too much weight on the witches' seemingly wild prophecy that Macbeth will become King of Scotland. He starts to believe it could be true.


His second moment of ill luck occurs when, just as he has decided it would be a bad idea to murder Duncan, who is a good king and a man to whom he is offering hospitality, his wife intervenes. Lady Macbeth speaks so forcefully about her own desire to "unsex" herself and even says she would go so far as to dash her baby's brains out if she had promised to do so, that Macbeth feels compelled to go through with the murder, even though he knows it is only going to lead to more and more bloodshed. At this point, there is no going back, and it is all downhill from then on.


So, if Macbeth had not had the bad luck to run into the witches at just the wrong time, and if he had been able to evade his wife after he had decided not to murder Duncan, he might have had a much better fate. 

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

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more