| To Not Kill Duncan And How Lady Macbeth Changes His Mind Essay, Research Paper
The
brave and confident Macbeth has a choice to kill, or not to kill Duncan.
Macbeth is torn between these two decisions and is unsure what to do. Lady
Macbeth persuades him by mocking his manhood. Should Macbeth kill Duncan? Macbeth
has many reasons for not killing Duncan. The first one is that Duncan has
"An absolute trust" in Macbeth and that he is Duncan’s kinsman. The
other duties he owes to Duncan are a subject to his king, and of a host to his
guest. Macbeth quite rightly believes that someone should not invite a guest
for the night and then kill them. As he says, he is his "host who should
against his murderer shut the door, not bear the knife myself." Macbeth
does not want to take the risk of even trying to kill Duncan because he thinks
that something might go wrong and ruin his chances of success. Macbeth also
reckons that his evil deeds could lead to his own death and everyone would be
hunting for the murderer. The
only reason for Macbeth to kill Duncan is his own ambition, which eventually
leads to the death of the king. Macbeth
tells us"That
tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur To
prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting
ambition, which o’er-leaps itself And
falls on the other."In
this Macbeth is telling us that Duncan represents the wall and he represents
the horse. The horse has to jump the wall to get past it. As the wall
represents Duncan on the throne, as soon as the horse (Macbeth) gets over the
other side he will become king. This shows us Macbeth’s real ambition to kill Duncan
and to finally become king. It
is Lady Macbeth’s sole goal to convince her husband to kill Duncan in order to
make Macbeth, already Thane of Cawdor and Glamis, king and thus herself queen.
Lady Macbeth becomes very ambitious to convince Macbeth to go ahead with the
murder by threatening his manhood. Lady Macbeth tries to say that her husband
should not let the chance he has now slip away, as it will be the only and
easiest one he will get. The
strongest argument is in lines 54-59 act 1 scene 7. She says that she would
even kill her beloved baby while it was sucking at her breasts if she had sworn
to do so. She assumes that Macbeth, the brave and worthy soldier, swore to kill
Duncan (which he never did), the king, she says that it is his duty to kill him.
As Lady Macbeth taunts her husband’s honour and manhood, he has to respond in
order not to look like a coward. Macbeth cannot question his wife’s
ambitiousness because there isn’t anything worse for a mother to do than kill
her baby and likewise there isn’t anything worse than a soldier can do than
kill his king. ??????????? It is, undoubtedly, evident that
Lady Macbeth’s argumentation’s as well as her tactical and rhetorical games are
successful. By the end of the scene she has completely convinced Macbeth and he
is all set to go ahead with the murder although he is nervous. Act
1 Scene 7 tells us that Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are very ambitious people. I
think that Lady Macbeth bullies Macbeth because at the start of the scene he
did not want to kill the king for several reasons. Lady Macbeth mocked his
honour and manhood and somehow got inside Macbeth’s mind and changed it. Lady
Macbeth also seems very evil because she would make up very disgusting
situations to make Macbeth change his mind like the killing of the baby in
lines 54-59 I
think that Macbeth would do anything for Lady Macbeth even though she mocks
him. I think he is kind of a wimp because he asks Lady Macbeth if they would
fail what would they do and she calms him down and he accepts to kill the king.??
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