This is a continuation of the post from yesterday – here is another paper I wrote about Shakespeare’s Macbeth for my summer literature course. This is different than all the other papers I wrote for this course, and this paper is the equivalent of a final paper (even though it’s the second-to-last assignment).

We were supposed to select a work we read throughout the semester about which to write an eight-page research paper arguing a specific topic of our choice. I indicate what my argument is in my thesis, so the rest of my paper should be pretty self-standing. The only other thing I have to mention is that we were supposed to include a summary of no more than a page and a half before presenting our evidence for our side of the argument.

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During the progression of a story, it is common for a main character to undergo a change as a result of the events composing the primary plot. Some of these changes maybe subtle, while others may significantly hinder, enhance, or simply alter the individual’s life in some way. Some of these changes may be external and physical, while others may be internal and psychological – I will be focusing on the latter by bringing in an extreme example of a man who suffered psychological trauma that changed who he really was on the inside. In William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, the main character Macbeth begins as a normal man, but eventually gets driven insane; this process is initiated by the witches’ prophecy, is further fueled by his wife’s influence, and is later confirmed by his hallucinations.

As an overview, Macbeth is about a man named Macbeth and his transition from a victorious battle general, to a king, to a killed man. Throughout the process, he faces some difficult situations; during some, he makes the right choices, but during most, he makes decisions that eventually lead to his downfall.

At the beginning of the play, Macbeth encounters three witches who prophesize, among other things, that he will become king. Unable to put this thought aside, and due to the strong influential power of his violent and manipulative wife, Macbeth ends up going out of his way to make sure this prediction comes true by killing the current king. He blames the murder on others, whom he kills as well, to ensure that nobody will discover he is the true killer.

During this process, Macbeth begins undergoing some psychological changes, as he was forced to do something that, arguably, he would not have done otherwise. He becomes mentally insecure and begins hallucinating; this follows him to the next turning point of the play, when he orders the execution of Banquo and his son Fleance, two individuals who threaten his position as king. After seeing Banquo’s ghost, Macbeth decides to return to the witches for advice; he thinks they respond with reassuring words, but they actually respond with riddles.

With this false sense of confidence, Macbeth orders the killing of his family, but his wife commits suicide instead. Not long after, the English forces begin marching towards Macbeth for revenge, and in a final battle between Macduff and Macbeth, Macbeth gets beheaded as predicted by the witches’ deceptive riddles.

Transitioning on and beginning to address the argument, in order to claim that Macbeth has become insane, we must first prove that he was initially a normal man. Taking a look at the first few scenes of the first act, we learn that Macbeth, one of King Duncan’s generals, was capable enough to lead a victorious battle against the Norwegians: “Till that Bellona’s bridegroom, lapped in proof, / Confronted him with self-comparisons, / Point against point, rebellious arm ‘gainst arm, / Curbing his lavish spirit; and to conclude, / The victory fell on us” (Shakespeare 8). This implies that he was in his right mind and had sufficient logical thought processes to win.

One could attempt to discredit the previous argument by stating that many leaders were insane during their rule but still ended up successful. According to A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness, the Inverse Law of Sanity states that, although sane leaders tend to perform better in peaceful situations, insane leaders tend to perform better in situations of turmoil (Ghaemi 1-22). Thus, the success and insanity of a leader has more to do with the context and situation than simply being insane. After establishing this exception, one could then proceed to argue that Macbeth might have been insane from the start because it is unclear as to whether or not the witches are actually real, or if they are just figments of Macbeth’s imagination. However, the idea that the witches were hallucinations is extremely difficult to prove because, at the beginning of the play, Banquo encounters the witches as well as Macbeth; he declares his acknowledgement of their presence by saying, “Are ye fantastical, or that indeed / Which outwardly ye show” (Shakespeare 14). Because it is highly unlikely that two individuals have the same hallucination at the same time, as hallucinations are creations by one’s own mind, the counterargument is rendered implausible.

On top of that, Banquo’s character development suggests that he is not the type of person who would have hallucinations in the first place, as he is a very rational person, as suggested by his reaction to the witches: “And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, / The instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s / In deepest consequence” (Shakespeare 20). In essence, Banquo is stating that things are not always as they seem, and something that appears good at first glance may end up causing someone’s demise. Thus, keeping consistent with how Shakespeare portrays Banquo, the witches were, in fact, present outside of Macbeth’s mind, because Banquo’s rational mind would not have fabricated the appearance of the witches like Macbeth’s might have.

Taking a first look at the spawn of the process of Macbeth’s turn to insanity, we must identify when Macbeth started going insane. The concept of going insane is most commonly associated with the onset of schizophrenia, so we must take a look at the symptoms of schizophrenia, and compare them to Macbeth’s behavior to identify when it showed signs of being present in Macbeth. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information and the U.S. National Library of Medicine, schizophrenia is characterized by “irritable or tense feeling, trouble concentrating, trouble sleeping; bizarre behaviors, hearing or seeing things that are not there (hallucinations), isolation, lack of emotion (flat affect), problems paying attention, strongly held beliefs that are not real (delusions), [and] thoughts that ‘jump’ between different topics (‘loose associations’)”.

The most obvious parallel we can make between the list of symptoms and Macbeth is his perception of a hallucination of a bloody knife before going on to murder King Duncan, as illustrated in act 2, scene 1 by “Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?” (Shakespeare 50). However, this shows that Macbeth had already developed a sense of insanity, and we want to identify that Macbeth went through a process that turned him insane, so we must backtrack and take a look at the very first environmental cue that set off his insanity. The reason Macbeth had the remotest idea to murder King Duncan was because of the witches’ prophecy that he will become king.

This brings up the argument of whether or not the witches’ prophecy had enough of an effect on Macbeth that they actually contributed to the process of driving him insane. In past history, there is evidence that witches were deemed as supernatural beings. Depending on a society’s religion, it was plausible for people to believe the words of witches and sorcerers, as they were grouped in the class of religious leaders. According to Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel, “… prophets, shamans, witches, mediums, and diviners can also be priests if they have regular cultic roles in their societies” (Wilson 27). Thus, in these societies, it was acceptable to closely follow the words of witches, as it was possible for them to hold a position of religious power. Thus, in the general sense, it is not farfetched for someone to change their behavior or course of action because of something they heard from a witch.

In Macbeth’s specific case, not only were witches influential simply because they were witches and they carry the stigma of power, but they also proved their power by predicting what would happen in the future, then giving Macbeth immediate feedback of their accuracy by having two of the predictions come true shortly afterwards. Macbeth acknowledges his recognition of the witches’ power by stating to Banquo, “Two truths are told, / As happy prologues to the swelling act / Of the imperial theme” (Shakespeare 20). This shows a distinct contrast from what Macbeth said earlier in disbelief: “A prosperous gentleman, and to be king / Stands not within the prospect of belief, / No more than to be Cawdor” (Shakespeare 16). These two conflicting statements indicate that Macbeth, as a result of the witches’ prophecy, changed his mind as to whether or not the predictions were valid. Thus, we can now safely deduce that the witches did contribute to Macbeth’s process of going insane and initially set it off, as changing someone’s mind definitely is distinctive of having a contribution to one’s actions and an influence to one’s thoughts.

At this point, however, one might argue that Macbeth still did not have to follow through with his first murder, because Macbeth says in a daze after learning that two of the predictions came true, “If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me / Without my stir” (Shakespeare 22). This essentially means that, because Macbeth did not have to take any directed action for the first two predictions to come true, he does not have to take any directed action to become king, and it will just happen on its own. If this is what Macbeth really thought, then why did he go on to commit the murder? This brings us to the next step of the insanity process, the sphere of influence exerted by Lady Macbeth.

When Macbeth tells Lady Macbeth about the witches’ prophecy, Lady Macbeth becomes driven to expedite the process and encourages Macbeth to plot with her to kill King Duncan so Macbeth can quickly take the throne. Macbeth initially goes against her plans: “We will proceed no further in this business. / He hath honored me of late, and I have bought / Golden opinions from all sorts of people, / Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, / Not cast aside so soon” (Shakespeare 42). Macbeth’s reaction shows that he is more interested in enjoying his recent promotion to thane, and is not interested in murdering the king to climb higher in the ladder so quickly.

However, Lady Macbeth does not give up her efforts there, as she begins to insult and challenge Macbeth’s manliness: “What beast was’t then, / That made you break this enterprise to me? / When you durst do it, then you were a man; / And to be more than what you were, you would / Be so much more the man” (Shakespeare 42, 44). She proceeds to strike bravery into Macbeth by continuing, “We fail? / But screw your courage to the sticking-place, / And we’ll not fail” (Shakespeare 44). Only after this elaborate persuasion from Lady Macbeth does Macbeth finally state, “I am settled, and bend up / Each corporal agent to this terrible feat. / Away, and mock the time with fairest show. / False face must hide what the false heart doth know” (Shakespeare 46).

This conversation, characterized by Lady Macbeth challenging Macbeth and manipulating his thoughts, had an extremely powerful impact on Macbeth. The act of murder is an extremely sensitive topic in most cultures, and the fact that Macbeth did not want to commit murder before the conversation and agrees to commit murder after the conversation indicates that the person on the other end of the conversation has formidable persuasion skills.

The conversation is clearly a part of the process of Macbeth’s change to insanity, but did it have a more direct effect other than simply encouraging him to do an act he otherwise would not have done? To expand on this, we can take a closer look at the techniques Lady Macbeth used when convincing Macbeth to commit the murder. The primary modes of attack were through challenging Macbeth’s manliness and energizing his thoughts such that the artificial thoughts injected into his mind by Lady Macbeth clouded his own rational thoughts.

According to “Male Development and the Transformation of Shame,” a loss of a sense of manliness or masculinity is frequently directly associated with feelings of shame; a common bodily reaction to shame is anger and rage while one attempts to remove one’s self-association with shame (Krugman 91). Lady Macbeth also instilled a feeling of bravery and courage in Macbeth when she spoke encouraging words. Anger, rage, bravery, and courage are all human emotions that are associated with the increased release of adrenaline. According to research done on manic-depressive insanity, “an over-excitement of the sympathetic nervous system, or hypersecretion of adrenaline … played an unexplained part in the pathogenesis of manic-depressive insanity” (Marshall 222-244). That is, when excess amounts of adrenaline were released, they triggered some sort of unidentified environmental cue that triggered the onset of insanity. Thus, in the process of Macbeth discussing the highly controversial topic of murder with his wife, the emotions that can be deduced from Macbeth’s responses can be correlated with high amounts of adrenaline release and could have contributed in triggering Macbeth’s insanity, if he had been more innately prone to acquiring it.

Now that we have identified the events leading up to Macbeth’s hallucinations, we can revisit the bloody knife mentioned earlier. Macbeth’s encounter with the hallucination appears to be the turning point from the internalization of his mental illness to the externalization through acting upon his insane thoughts. The vision of the bloody knife happens between when Macbeth’s insanity only existed inside Macbeth and when Macbeth first harms another person as a result of his insanity. This suggests that Macbeth’s first visual hallucination is a significant part of the process of the production of his insanity because it marks when Macbeth actually demonstrates his undeniable insanity for the first time.

Macbeth’s second hallucination further confirms that the process of his conversion to insanity is complete. According to research on hallucinations experienced by individuals with schizophrenia, visual hallucinations are the second most frequent types of hallucinations, which “can appear to be distorted or strange to the patient, and can also be frightening” (Stannard). Macbeth clearly shows his fear to the visual hallucination by crying out upon seeing Banquo’s ghost, “Avaunt, and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee. / Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold. / Thou hast no speculation in those eyes / Which thou dost glare with!” (Shakespeare 116). On top of that, other research shows that, for visual hallucinations, the content of the hallucination is typically people or human-like figures (American Psychiatric Association). This makes Macbeth’s symptoms coincide with the symptoms experienced by the majority group of people who have schizophrenia, which enforces the fact that Macbeth has, in fact, gone insane.

Now we have proven that Macbeth went from being a normal man to an insane man throughout the play, what actual importance does this have to the play? Keeping in the back of our minds that Macbeth was so prone to outside influences such that he developed a mental disorder, this could alter the way we see Macbeth as a character when reading the play. It is clear that Shakespeare wanted Macbeth to be the main character, but from our new viewpoint, Macbeth might not necessarily be the conventional main character we expect to see in most stories. Instead of the story revolving around Macbeth, Macbeth seems to be revolving around the story. This draws more attention to the secondary characters contained in the story, more specifically, the witches and Lady Macbeth. This could help uncover Shakespeare’s potentially hidden motivations for writing the play in this manner, such as attempting to bring across the moral of learning to stand up for one’s beliefs.