Macbeth Lecture Notes Day Two

• Lady Macbeth
• determined, manipulative, animus, evil, pure force
• Macbeth can persevere through the guilt because he owns up to what he's done
• this makes him slightly more admirable
• Lady Macbeth can't admit to herself she's done anything wrong
• she's unaware that she feels guilt inside, and it destroys her from within
• the ultimate control freak, once she loses control of her husband, she reaches her breaking point and commits suicide.
• Their relationship in the beginning:
• Macbeth and wife are a real couple
• they love and support one another. they talk things out before doing anything
• after the murder, they start to move apart
• Macbeth is moving on and making decisions without his wife, determined to set his life in order again.
• all his worries are purely psychological
• no one suspects him yet he's paranoid.
• he's betrayed his value system and wants to forget so he won't have to feel guilty for what he's done.
• with each murder he commits, he believes he's doing something good, securing his position as king, but he's becoming more and more inhuman.
• he loses the ablitity to feel sensitive about life, and the link between himself and other human beings is severed.
• there's no longer any value to his life without someone to share it with
• his life has become empty (*see soliloquoy)
• he has everything but cares about nothing
• The Witches
• they remind us of the evil that secretly lies in everyone and drives us to do certain things
• they don't force Macbeth to do anything
• they give him the idea of being king and inform his own thinking
• Macbeth and his wife had already discussed him being king
• Macbeth was looking for something to give himn permission to do what he already had thought about doing
• they're pure evil, there to tempt and torment mankind.
• *Banquo
• he's important as a character because his reaction to the witches is in complete contrast with Macbeth's.
• he's happy for his children's destiny, but wouldn't want it if he had to do something he knew was awful.
• his honor was more important to him
• Macbeth listens, but doesn't care.
• he wants to believe the witches because he likes what they have to say more.
• possible possitive values in the witches???
• they are outcasts of society and women, completely excluded
• yet, they hold all the power in this story
• they are above the natural world
• a final thought:
• though Shakespeare doesn't specifically say, after Macbeth's death, the witches are still left to be dealt with, somewhere in the world. Almost as if to say that evil still exists in the world