In Shakespeare's tale of Macbeth, the title character does a lot of sketchy stuff to become the king of Scotland and try to stay that way. Sketchy stuff being murdering the former king, his best friend, and the wife and child of a potential threat. The whole time he knows that he'll become king on the word of a witch's prophecy, so there wasn't a lot of risk in that part. But in the end, his wife goes insane and dies, and then he himself is dead. The questions that the readers/ audience is left with tends to be "was it worth it?"
In my opinion, no. I think he ended up worse off than when he started. While the Macbeth we meet at the beginning of the play was not the wealthiest man, he did alright. He and his wife were living comfortably, if modestly. They didn't have a family, but that was alright- he had a nice job (protecting the kingdom) and a good boss (the king) who seemed to like him- he wasn't at the top of the food chain but he wasn't at the bottom either.
By the time he meets his end, he's more paranoid than a conspiracy-fearing neckbeard reddit user, his wife is just plain going off the deep end before she dies somewhat mysteriously, and then he is murdered and remembered by no one but the people who despised him.
And that, I think is what matters- that his short and strange life was ended abruptly without him making any positive contributions to the world.
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I agree with you in that based on the way his life turned out, Macbeth's actions were not worth it, but I think his life could have turned out very differently if he didn't let paranoia consume his life. I think if Macbeth had acted differently, the killings would have been worth it.
ReplyDeleteI think that if Macbeth had stayed put and not killed his friends, then he would have been way way waaay better off than he was after the murder. State of mind is better than possession of any kind wealth of position, because even if you have money and power, it all means nothing if you go crazy.
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