macbeth

Macbeth is Bipolar
One would say that being bipolar in today’s society isn’t that bad of a mental disease, but when you throw that mental disease into the power of a potential king, you live on a day to day basis and never know what could happen in the blink of an eye. Bipolar Disorder is one of the oldest mental disorders and its symptoms have been molded by differing theories over time until it actually had its own classification. For many years, Bipolar Disorder was linked to Schizophrenia. The founder of this disorder, Francois Baillarger, was finally successful in separating the two disorders and Emeril Krapelin finally acclaimed the title "manic depression" in 1913.
According to the American Psychological Association, the mental disease, Bipolar Disorder, is a serious mental illness in which common emotions become intensely and often unpredictably magnified. Individuals with bipolar disorder can quickly swing from extremes of happiness, energy and clarity to sadness, fatigue and confusion. These shifts can be so devastating that individuals may choose suicide as an easy way to relieve themselves from the pain that may be brought upon them from this mental disorder. All people with bipolar disorder have episodes which are abnormally elevated or irritable moods that last at least a week and impair day to day functioning. But not all become depressed. Some people can go from an extreme happiness to a suicidal state back to happiness in the matter of an hour. Most of these mood swings are based of events that are happening in the person’s life. In the play, Macbeth, the main character, Macbeth, has a hard time maintaining one view during the acts of the play. He wants to become king of Scotland so he plots to kill the current king, King Duncan. Though during the course of the play, Macbeth shows many signs of bipolar disorder according to what he does through the entire play.

Certain examples explaining that Macbeth suffers from bipolar disorder are that he is very eager to become king and is willing to kill everyone within the line-up of being a king. Macbeth states that he is going to kill the King himself. He says that in doing it, it pays itself (I. iv. 417). By killing everyone that stands ahead of him in line for king, he feels as though he has an extremely good chance of being the next king. Macbeth says “If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, without my stir” (I. iii. 415) which means that he doesn’t want anyone to get involved with being king, so he started to get paranoid and started thinking of ways that someone could have seen him commit the murder and ways in which someone could find out that he committed the murder. So with all of this going through his head, he began to act irrationally. And he would kill anyone that he suspected knew something about him committing the murder of King Duncan. After all of his mass murdering, he feels guilty one second, but later he is happy about it because he is ultimately, ranking up as king.

Work Cited
"Bipolar Disorder." Mayo Clinic. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 18 Jan 2012. Web. 3 Dec 2013.
"Bipolar Disorder." American Psychological Association. American Psychological Association, 20 Feb 2013. Web. 3 Dec 2013.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth. Elements of Literature: Sixth Course, Literature Of Britian. Ed. Kathleen Daniel, et.al Austin: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 2009. 406-492

Cited: "Bipolar Disorder." Mayo Clinic. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 18 Jan 2012. Web. 3 Dec 2013. "Bipolar Disorder." American Psychological Association. American Psychological Association, 20 Feb 2013. Web. 3 Dec 2013. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth. Elements of Literature: Sixth Course, Literature Of Britian. Ed. Kathleen Daniel, et.al Austin: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 2009. 406-492