The Supernatural Essay, Research Paper
Throughout William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, many characters evolve and
many disappear into the background. The main character, Macbeth (MB for
short), travels through utter chaos when he proclaims himself monarch.
When he first meets the witches of the supernatural, they tell him of
the future. One of the themes amplified throughout the play is the
circle of life, from the beginning to the end. The visions provided by
the three witches begin Macbeth’s quest for dominance. The three main
effects of this theme are: the death of Macbeth’s friends and family.
Second, the deaths of his mortal enemies. The last point is the death of
himself. The supernatural amplifies the theme of death.
From the first brief encounter of the witches, to the last nightmarish
visions that Macbeth has, many close friends and relatives have died
because of his visions with the supernatural. The death of his wife in
Act V, Scene IV is the death that sends him over the abyss and into
mental instability. Lady Macbeth is like a joined appendage to Macbeth.
They work as one, communicate as one, and when that appendage is lost,
so is MB’s grip with reality. Lady Macbeth was the only person he could
truly confide in. The supernatural also had another key factor to her
death. In the first act of the play, she calls on the powers of the
supernatural to make her strong. The following quote, “Come, you spirits
that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown
to the toe, top-full of direst cruelty! make thick my blood, stop up the
access and passage to remorse? Come to my woman’s breasts, and take my
milk for gall?”, is possibly the most important passage that leads to
Lady Macbeth’s death. She calls on the evil spirits to “unsex” her, and
to replace her “milk” with “gall”. It seems that she wants to be the
most cruelest being in the world. The theme of the life cycle is
amplified in this situation because of her request to the spirits. This
event is the beginning of the end for Lady Macbeth’s life. She is the
one who insists Macbeth should kill the king and reign as the king of
Scotland. It is her ideas and plans that lead herself and Macbeth into
the pits of hell. She is not solely to blame for this catastrophe
though. It is Macbeth that decides to go forward with the plans.
Throughout all the chaos in the remaining scenes of the play, she is
eventually killed by one of Malcolm’s associates. Therefore, it is her
own foul play with the supernatural that leads to her death.
This play shows how one man can turn himself into a barbarian just by
one simple vision. Throughout this play, many of Macbeth’s enemies, and
traitors (Banquo) are killed by Macbeth or his hired assassins. In the
first vision provided by the witches, Macbeth seems himself as king of
Scotland, and Banquo’s children future heirs to the throne. When Macbeth
finally kills King Duncan, the turning point has vanished. There is no
going back to the past and changing what has happened. This event
signals the gates of hell to unlatch the door that holds the chaos that
will torment Macbeth to his own death. This regicide happens all because
to path to what Macbeth thinks of freedom is open. After the Th
Cawdor is executed, MB believes that he can then crush his remaining
enemies with one swift stroke. This is not so, as Macbeth finds. After
he commits regicide, he realizes that he must kill all the enemies that
oppose him, mainly Malcolm, the king’s heir to the throne. When Banquo
sees through MB’s falsehood, he then turns traitor. When Macbeth
realizes that one of his closest friends has become his mortal enemy, he
sees to it that Banquo is murdered. Once again, these significant deaths
on the timeline all happen because of the supernatural. The visions from
the three witches, and the summonings of evil from Lady Macbeth are the
two events that mainly lead to this path of destruction. The first
paradox from the witches serves to confuse the reader into thinking what
will happen to Banquo. Macbeth knows that he must become king of
Scotland before Banquo or he will not fulfill his prophecy.
All these events lead up to end, the murder of Macbeth himself. From the
very beginning of the play, Macbeth sees himself as a visionary, who can
see into near future. Only after his wife is killed does he suddenly
loose grip with reality. With this event, Macbeth can now be compared to
as Adolf Hitler. Both loose their sanity after they loose something very
dear to them. For Macbeth, it is his wife. For Hitler, it is world
domination. After both of these figures loose these “possessions”, they
suddenly go haywire. Although Hitler did not reign on the powers of the
supernatural, he did go completely off the edge after the Allied forces
started to invade Germany. Both these figures made one horrible mistake.
Macbeth listened to the prophecies and vowed to kill the king. When he
committed regicide, that was his horrible mistake. That was when
everything turned against him, and when he could never turn back. When
Hitler invaded the U.S.S.R. in 1944-5, the Allies had a chance to
conquer Germany. That single tactical error was what made him go over
the edge. After both of these leaders go mad, they are killed in battle
or commit suicide. Macbeth has a chance to flee at the end, but chooses
not to and is slain in battle. Hitler also has a chance to “run away”
but he and his wife commit suicide by having his officers douse him with
gasoline and set both of them on fire. Macbeth’s mistake, originally
started by that one supernatural encounter with the three witches
eventually leads to his demise.
In conclusion, the use of the supernatural amplifies the cycle of life
or the beginning of the end. Throughout each encounter that Macbeth has
with a supernatural prophecy, he proceeds one more step towards
insanity, and eventually his own death. The death of his closest
companion, Lady Macbeth, also brings him one more step towards his own
death. In Macbeth, a pattern resides, where one death after another
caused by the supernatural brings him closer to insanity and to his own
death. In some spots, it looks like Macbeth needs to be told to put one
foot in front of another. This tragic tale of one man’s cycle of life
lead by the supernatural, also paints a vision of the beginning of his
plunge into insanity. Macbeth’s first encounter with the three witches
is truly the beginning of the end.