Pity For Lady Macbeth

I don’t necessarily empathize with Macbeth, but I do feel an iota of pity for him. I pity Macbeth for not what he is, but for what he could have become. He turned from a valiant war general to a bloodthirsty and power hungry shell of a man. By the end of the book, I felt absolutely no sorrow for him. Every decision he made was his own. Though he was influenced by the likes of the witches and Lady Macbeth early in the book, he was by no means forced to do anything by the end. Killing Banquo along with Lady Macbeth and her child was entirely his choice. Macbeth deserves not a drop of compassion for his awful actions. Though Macbeth may have been redeemable at one point, the moment he crossed the crimson river, he went too far beyond redemption.
Those qualities include ambition, decisiveness, intellect, and most of all power. Whoever holds those characteristics is certainly no pushover. A general like Macbeth knows full well what he is doing. Macbeth’s ambition bars a thin line to greed since he’s really doing what will only help himself. Killing Duncan won’t really be beneficial for the Country. Macbeth fully understands that doing so would only benefit him while it bares the risk of destroying all of Scotland. In his plans to kill Duncan, we might feel pity for his Macbeth’s restlessness. “Shakes so my single state of man that function...Is...smothered in surmise”.Macbeth obviously isn’t in the best condition here as he is literally shaking to his very core. Thinking about killing Duncan doesn’t seem too healthy, but it gets worse as he is smothered in surmise. Here I do pity Macbeth slightly because it is clear that he’s going through a severe internal struggle over killing Duncan. The use of the word surmise is noted since it has a different connotation than apprehension. Macbeth’s surmise has nothing solid to be based off of, but he knows that it is wrong. At this point in the book, Macbeth is well away from crossing the crimson river Here he only considers killing Duncan, not even the steps required to do it. None of this obviously sounds nice, but we must consider the situation at hand. Macbeth is thinking about killing his king. Of course Macbeth’s going to lose sleep over this, after all who wouldn’t? Do I feel bad for him though? I still don’t pity Macbeth, but he did at some point have a functional moral compass. Any lenity towards Macbeth comes from the fact that he was not just ready to kill Duncan from the get-go. I do not agree with Macbeth’s decisions though. There should be no pity for a man who is even considering regicide. Macbeth’s faith to Duncan has been entirely thrown out the window in exchange for power. This is a characteristic of