Free Will In Macbeth
In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the protagonist murders his friends and sets the entire kingdom into disarray after three witches profess that he will one day be king. His intentions started off innocently enough but soon he becomes mad with paranoia and greed; these will be the motivators that drive Macbeth to his doom. The question in Macbeth is whether he was acting out of his own free will, or if it was all part of his Fate. This dilemma is similar to one of the most important parts of John Milton’s Paradise Lost where it is clearly stated that Satan has no free will and his acting on behalf of the Fate that God has created for him in order to fulfill his greater plan. These heroes share a lot in common, by which I mean none that
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Satan achieved his goal and like Macbeth, faced the unavoidable consequences they both knew would come for them. In Macbeth’s case, after losing Lady Macbeth he realizes that life is meaningless and that all will die and end eventually. He faces Macduff in this sorry mental state, going out to defeat any army when his own has abandoned him; and ultimately dying. Satan knew he would be banished back into Hell without perhaps an even worse fate than being chained down to a lake of fire, but he followed through God’s plan for him. The doomed heroes share similarities inside their tragic tales, in which they are moved to do what they believe is their own right do so. The tragedy of Macbeth is his downfall caused by his early experiences with the witches and the experiences that followed that he forces to happen by his own free will result in his own murder. Satan’s is, that however much he wishes it, he was not created with free will. He wants to think that he is the one that rebelled against God and led the fallen to war and that he wants to destroy mankind as an act of defiance for being trapped in Hell. He realizes this, briefly, when he enters Eden. It reminds him of Heaven and he sadly looks at the sun while thinking of how ungrateful he had been to God and how he missed Heaven. He was happy and content there but something else drove him to want to be above God and he does not know
Satan achieved his goal and like Macbeth, faced the unavoidable consequences they both knew would come for them. In Macbeth’s case, after losing Lady Macbeth he realizes that life is meaningless and that all will die and end eventually. He faces Macduff in this sorry mental state, going out to defeat any army when his own has abandoned him; and ultimately dying. Satan knew he would be banished back into Hell without perhaps an even worse fate than being chained down to a lake of fire, but he followed through God’s plan for him. The doomed heroes share similarities inside their tragic tales, in which they are moved to do what they believe is their own right do so. The tragedy of Macbeth is his downfall caused by his early experiences with the witches and the experiences that followed that he forces to happen by his own free will result in his own murder. Satan’s is, that however much he wishes it, he was not created with free will. He wants to think that he is the one that rebelled against God and led the fallen to war and that he wants to destroy mankind as an act of defiance for being trapped in Hell. He realizes this, briefly, when he enters Eden. It reminds him of Heaven and he sadly looks at the sun while thinking of how ungrateful he had been to God and how he missed Heaven. He was happy and content there but something else drove him to want to be above God and he does not know