Shakespeare Prize 2008
(a) Macbeth was given a tragic character by Shakespeare, who goes from high honour to psychological problems to death. At the start of the play Macbeth is a loyal and honoured follower of the king. He always back’s Duncan and fights alongside him no matter what to ensure his safety.
When he finds out, that he will become king or has a chance to become king he becomes thirsty for power, in this is the start of Macbeth’s life about to spiral out of control, from this point on Macbeth becomes negative and is persuaded by Lady Macbeths actions to convince him to follow her train of thoughts. After the killing of Duncan, Macbeth begins to lose control of himself and we see unusual behaviour like hallucinating, for example: the blood and smell on his fingers that he cannot get rid of. We also see him going insane when he believes Duncan is at the banquet, but instead it’s a ghost which is fooling him. This shows us that he possibly has guilt and regret for what he has done, but when he realises there is no turning or changing what he has done he decides to get over it and become ever more ruthless and cruel. We also see his cruel personality at the end of the play as he does not give up and continues his ruthless actions by murdering all of Macduff’s family and thinks he is invincible but yet he has no one to turn too as the disaster he has landed himself in is irreversible. It’s not until Macduff had enough of his ruthless cruelty he challenged him and in the ended murdered him and rightly so in my opinion. I think Shakespeare wanted to portray with the character of Macbeth how power can really destroy people and their lives until they realise there is no way back out of the horrible and unforgiving they get themselves into.