Grade 9 Macbeth Essay on Macbeth as a villain !!!PRICE DROP!!!
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Course
English
Institution
GCSE
Book
Macbeth / The Tragedy of Macbeth
Shows how to successfully write a Grade 9 response to a Macbeth question with multiple in-depth inferences with deep level thinking that can be used in all your essay plans in an exam. Shows how whilst Macbeth is portrayed as a heinous, evil, malicious villain, what made him this way and what (or w...
Macbeth Grade 9 Essay Example
To what extend does Shakespeare portray Macbeth as a villain? (no extract)
Shakespeare presents Macbeth to a slight extent as a villain as his thoughts
seem sinister and dark when he imagines a dagger yet there is some question
towards how reliable his feelings are which may suggest that perhaps he may
not be villainous and is just unstable and troubled by the thoughts encouraged
by those around him (Lady Macbeth and the Witches). When he questions if
‘this is a dagger which I see before me, the handle towards my hand?’, the use
of the noun in ‘dagger’ is shown as dangerous and foreboding which mirrors his
thoughts which are violent, brutal and regicidal because he wants to murder the
innocent King for his own selfish, ambitious desires. This paints him as an evil,
heinous and wicked individual and the Jacobean audience when watching the
play would agree as they would be mainly Christian so therefore regicide was
not only a crime against the King but also against God himself which is the most
evil, blasphemous sin a person can commit. This could suggest how different
Macbeth is to others as he doesn’t have the same moral values and conscience
as the audience does at the time and this is reinforced when since Macbeth is
hallucinating, which implies he has an unstable and vulnerable mindset (as he
says he has an ‘heat-oppressed brain’ where the pre-modifying adjective
connotes he has a fevered brain which may have a double meaning, is he
physically sick with fever or mentally ill?). Therefore, the audience questions if
he can be held fully accountable for his malicious thoughts and future actions as
he is disturbed because in the Jacobean era, mental health wasn’t something
that was fully understood or researched so cannot be definitely blamed for his
actions due to a lack of knowledge. In addition, the use of the doubtful
rhetorical question could be one of surprise or sudden determination caused by
disbelief to put his desire into action to inflict violence and pain.
Furthermore, the fact that he asks a question presents him as indecisive and
irresolute as he is asking a question even though he is alone which could show
how dependent he is on someone else to make the decision for him, which
could imply that he isn’t truly a villain, it is the others around him who
eventually persuade him as it is common for those to have thought about evil
deeds such as Banquo when he thinks about the Witches prophesy like Macbeth
but he deals with it differently as he says ‘But hush, no more’ which perhaps
shows how out of control Macbeth is as he has no self-control when it comes to
power.
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