MacBeth Rough Draft

Change can be both a good and bad thing. If you change to become a better person for yourself then that is a good example of change, but if you change to fit into someones life and change the person you are is a bad example. In the play “MacBeth” there are two characters named MacBeth and Lady MacBeth, and one of them makes the other change for the wrong reason. MacBeth changes to gain power for him and Lady MacBeth no matter the price he has to pay. William Shakespeare’s “MacBeth” shows us that you shouldn’t change to live a life that is not meant for you, or else you will destroy the person you once were. 

MacBeth in the beginning of the story was thought of as a humble person. People liked him and thought that he was a strong noble warrior. “I wish you had deserved less, so that I might have been able to give you thanks and payment in a proportion greater then you deserve. I can only say that more is owing to you then can ever be repaid.” But then MacBeth received a message from the three witches telling him that he would become king once King Duncan died. MacBeth wrote a letter telling Lady Macbeth what would happen. However, Lady MacBeth wanted to gain the power faster so she told MacBeth to kill the king. "When Duncan is asleep, which his hard day's journey will strongly invite him to, I will so overpower his two servants with wine and drunken toasts that memory, which should guard the brain, will become merely a wisp of smoke, and the vessel of reason (the brain) will only be an empty container. Asleep like swine, their alcohol-drowned senses numb as if in death what can't we two do then to the unguarded Duncan? What blame can't we attach to his drunken servants, who will be held guilty of our great murder?” With getting a glimpse of a life they could have Lady MacBeth is already trying to convince MacBeth to change for the bad. 

Lady MacBeth convinced MacBeth to kill Duncan by calling him a coward and telling him that "If Duncan hadn't looked like my father in his sleep, I'd have done it myself.” causing his morals to change. MacBeth killed someone because his wife told him to, and he didn’t want to upset her so he did. After he killed Duncan MacBeth was paranoid about everything. Every little sound he heard he would freak out about. Whenever someone would whisper he thought that they knew what he and Lady MacBeth did. "Where is that knocking coming from? What is the matter with me that every noise terrifies me?” MacBeth is changing more and more each time people talk leading him to become someone he's not. He sent out murderers to kill Banquo, his best friend, because the three witches said that his children would be kings. After the death of Banquo, Macbeth wasn’t quit the same.

With having stolen power, MacBeth was more suspicious of everything. He grew more frantic about the crimes he had committed that he sent murderers out to kill MacDuff because he thought that he knew that he killed Duncan. But when the murderers got to MacDuff place he already left to find Malcolm. The wife he cared so much for, that he killed people for, he stopped caring for her because he was too caught up in everything else. “The queen, my lord, is dead.” MacBeth was to busy trying not to die himself that he didn’t care when his wife died. In the end MacBeth died, and Malcolm became king. It’s fitting that the power MacBeth fought so hard for to get ended up killing him in the end.

William Shakespeare’s “MacBeth” shows us that you shouldn’t change to live a life that is not meant for you, or else you will destroy the person you once were. That is exactly happened to MacBeth. He may have physically died at the end, but the person he once was died when he decided to kill to Duncan for power. He lost all of his morals, thus the man he changed into was for the worst, not for the greater good. He should have just waited for his time to be king, not trying to change fate and make it come faster.