Read the following conclusions and decide which one sounds the best to you and why.
Also, ask yourselves: what features do they all share?
1. In the last scenes of the play, Macbeth still induces sympathy within the reader because he has in truth become more of a sad and lonely character than an evil and twisted one. The reader, unlike the other characters, sees that Macbeth is still a good person underneath his cruel exterior. Shakespeare shows here that no one is a complete monster in spite of their appearance, and that traits such as cruelty often mask a deeply insecure and troubled individual.
2. Overall in the story of Macbeth, by Shakespeare, Macbeth learns that killing is physically easy but mentally hard. Today’s criminals face the same sort of dilemmas, yet the majority of the population of the world despises them because they do not know the reasons why the criminals did what they did. Hopefully, the story of Macbeth will help the public understand not to be biased against people who made wrong decisions in the past and more willing to try to help them.
3. Although on the surface Macbeth seems like a cold blooded killer, if you look at his emotions, there is no question as to why he appears as such a sympathetic character. He goes through a series of emotions that every reader is familiar with, although hopefully in a less tragic and violent fashion. When forced with a decision, Macbeth cannot choose. Eventually, he makes a hasty decision under his wife’s influence, and then debates with his conscience on whether he did the right thing. He goes through a phase of denial, where he simply tries to ignore the problem all together, and he then finally ends up reconnecting with his humanity through the emotion of regret, when he realizes that he made the wrong decision. This a pattern of emotion that any reader would be familiar with, therefore making Macbeth a sympathetic and engaging character, despite his obvious character flaws.
4. By the end of the play Macbeth does resemble the witches in that he becomes a despised, hardened outcast with supernatural knowledge of his future. It is interesting that he associates the immunity to fear and horror that he strives for with being manly, when, in fact, it is a witchlike quality and the witches seem to be neither female nor male. This suggests not only that Macbeth has become neither male nor female instead of, as he desires, more manly, but also that, in Macbeth, changes to traditional categories of gender are a token of evil.
5. It is therefore evident that Lady Macbeth is undoubtedly the master puppeteer who thinks that she is in control of the play (at least at the beginning). Due to her absolute control over Macbeth, his mind and conscience are never given an opportunity to rise to the surface. Can all the responsibility for the decisions of Macbeth, then, truly be attributed to Macbeth? Can they even be attributed to Lady Macbeth? Eventually, she too becomes a mere pawn in a greater game of fate. As the tale draws to a close, she loses her control over their relationship, eventually is driven insane by the atrocities that she has committed, and dies. It is not, then, a tragedy of Macbeth. Nor is it a tragedy of Lady Macbeth. It is the tragedy of a relationship that ultimately led to death and horror.