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Is Macbeth A Hero Or A Villain Analysis

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Is Macbeth A Hero Or A Villain Analysis
I believe Macbeth is both a victim and a villain and over the course of the play his character changes. Macbeth is a tragic hero because he possessed qualities of hero: a person from a noble family, basically good, but, plagued by his ambition, ends up committing horrible act, bringing his own downfall, leaving us with pity and terror. Macbeth is a victim of fate because of the three witches, the influence of his wife, and his own fears. Because the witches fueled his greed by telling him how no man born of a woman could defeat him, Macbeth thinking about being made king caused him to perform wrong deeds.
Throughout the play, Macbeth is faced with various situations and his reactions to those are influenced by other characters in the play. In the beginning of the play, Macbeth is presented as
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His blinding ambition leads him to change into a person driven into more and more depraved action for self-preservation. His new normal of a tyrannical self becomes his world as he realizes that he cannot go back. His mind is full of regret but there is nothing to look back to. The path he had taken was leading him to eternal damnation and he knows that he cannot reverse it. This leads to hallucinations, paranoia and random acts of violence and killings making him a hated object in his kingdom. His wife also falls into the same vortex as she knows that she has blood on her hands as much as him. What Shakespeare gave Macbeth was a free will. Life will have its propositions and temptations. But a person, especially one with the social stature of Macbeth, is expected to weigh the good with the bad. But his ambition, spurred on by the witches and his wife, brought his downfall. Man may believe that goal achievement is important and the path taken is immaterial, however Macbeth teaches us that path to the goal is as important as the goal

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