Critical Lens Essay Example

Critical Lens An anonymous speaker once said, " In literature, evil often triumphs but never conquers." This means that in literature there is always a clash between a good side and an evil side. The characters on the evil side are usually illustrated as more intelligent figures and will appear to be winning the little battles with the good side however, in the end the good will always prevail. I agree with this quote because whatever happens good will always conquer as seen in both Macbeth by William Shakespeare and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne In William Shakespeare's Macbeth, Macbeth is presented as being power hungry, who stole the throne of Scotland from Malcolm, and put the country into complete chaos throughout his evil reign. In order to accomplish this, Macbeth was manipulated and encouraged by his wife, Lady Macbeth, to murder King Duncan in order to seize the throne for himself. All of these horrid things that Macbeth does to gain the throne are depicted as the evil triumphs. As the play progressed, Macbeth is afraid of begin discovered and commits to more killings and from here it appears that evil is becoming victorious. However, after all the murders, Macbeth thinks he is invincible and can not be touched and this overconfidence leads to his downfall. Even though Macbeth triumphed because he succeeded in getting King Duncan killed and was able to achieve his goals, he did not conquer because he was killed and order was restored. In The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth declares that he will get revenge on the man who had an affair with Hester. His evil intentions of revenge slowly fades away when he discoveres that the man was Arthur Dimmesdale. Chillingworth loses his objective of hatred and although he dies at the end of the novel, he dies without the thoughts of hatred and revenge. Another reason was that, Hester was accused of commiting adultery and was forced to wear a scarlet letter which symbolizes the sins she has done.