The Nature Of Evil In Macbeth

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Is a person who is manipulated and threatened into murdering truly at fault? In the play Macbeth, Macbeth is an honorable and loyal Thane of Scotland with an absence of conscience. Three witches and his overly ambitious and greedy wife, Lady Macbeth, use his absence of conscience against him. The witches manipulate and trick him into believing he would become king, which makes Lady Macbeth threaten him because of her greed to become royalty. Macbeth ends up killing his great and mild king, Duncan, along with his best of friends. Macbeth was not ruthless enough to commit these crimes on his own, but was rather manipulated by the witches and Lady Macbeth, who used tricky and manipulative techniques to tempt and use him. So, Macbeth is …show more content…
This quote shows that Macbeth had made a final decision to not kill Duncan, but still ended up killing his. This also shows that Lady Macbeth and the witches combined are the ones to convince him and change his mind at the final moment. If Macbeth was truly evil by nature, then he wouldn’t even think twice about murdering Duncan, Banquo, and Macduff’s family. Lady Macbeth and the witches should be the ones to be blamed for the evil act. When discussing Macbeth’s mental state, one critic said that Macbeth had an absence of conscience and that this contributes to Macbeth murdering Duncan (McCarthy). McCarthy is right; Macbeth’s absence of conscience did lead him to murder Duncan. But, because Macbeth, at the time, had an absence of conscience, Lady Macbeth controlled him. This explains why Macbeth was very easily convinced to murder Duncan when he had recently decided against it. If Lady Macbeth was the one to truly control Macbeth because of his lack of conscience, then Macbeth was not conscience and was being manipulated/tricked when he killed/sent to kill Duncan, Banquo, and Macduff’s family. This completely disproves the point that Macbeth is just violent by nature and always conscience when he commits evil

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