“this Dead Butcher”, How Far Do You Agree with Malcolm’s Description of Macbeth?

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the horror of the deed that Macbeth has committed by showing that the intellect and pensiveness that Macbeth previously had is gone. Macbeth is plagued with fear that nature will “prate of [his] whereabouts”. Shakespeare’s personification of nature shows that Macbeth is committing such an atrocity that the inanimate object of nature will expose his secret to all and “blow the horrid deed in every eye”. While Lady Macbeth is manipulating Macbeth to kill Duncan, he ponders the morality of the act and fears the consequences and in this way, he is not a butcher. He states “this even handed justice / commends th’ingredience of our poisoned chalice/ to our own lips”. This shows that Macbeth is worried that the deed of commuting a murder will come full circle and he, himself will eventually be killed by someone too.

However, Macbeth then decides to kill many others on his own without valid reasons and it is this that forms the basis of the argument that Macbeth is a butcher. He goes on to kill Macduff’s family, “his wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls / that trace him in his line.” the rapid succession of Macbeth’s victims created by Shakespeare’s list is indicative of a butcher. It shows how Macbeth’s thought process has turned into chaos as he loses all rational thought; he goes from wanting to kill one person, Macduff, to wanting to kill more and more innocent figures, “his wife, his babes”. In addition to this Macbeth loses his fear and apprehension to kill because of the consequences. He states, “I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er”. The use of the word “tedious” here could also mean boring, which implies that Macbeth is so detached from his emotions that it would be boring to stop killing people. When Macbeths gets the murderers to kill Lady Macduff and her son, the murder states “what you / egg”, the use of the word egg implies that Macduff’s son is fragile. Macbeth also becomes more arrogant and impulsive. He states that “the very firstlings of [his] heart shall be / the very firstlings of [his] hand”. Here Macbeth loses a key trait that previously made him not a butcher, he no longer ponders the morality of his actions anymore and wants to preform everything impulsively and immediately which makes him more of a butcher than ever. Here, Macbeth is giving in to the Freudian ‘id’, or the subconscious part of the brain, he is not using the ‘ego’ which is the reasonable, pensive Macbeth of previous acts where he may have even been using the ‘super ego’.

During the course of the play, Macbeth becomes more and more duplicitous; this becomes apparent in the banquet scene where his inner reality breaks out. He says that he will “play the humble host”; Shakespeare’s use of the word “play” implies that Macbeth is acting and he may not be as “humble” and innocent as he seems. This is an example of Lady Macbeth’s manipulation at work coupled with Macbeth’s hamartia, hubris. Lady Macbeth told Macbeth to “look like the innocent flower / but be the serpent under it”. One of the first things Macbeth says to Banquo’s ghost is “thou canst say I did it”, this defensiveness is indicative of someone that has done something wrong. This duplicity is something that makes Macbeth a butcher, his public face of the “humble host” is just a façade for his inner self which ultimately is a butcher.

At the end of the play, Macbeth turns to nihilistic despair after hearing about his wife’s death. Instead of being confident that his army will vanquish the English, he now believes that “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day”. The repetition of the word “tomorrow” further emphasises how long Macbeth feels life is. However he also states that “life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player / that struts and frets his hour upon the stage”, this oxymoronic nature to Macbeth does not present him as a butcher, and it presents him as a loving husband who is grieving after their loss of his wife.

In conclusion, in the beginning of the play, Macbeth has a lot of features that make him not a butcher, but as the play progresses, he becomes under the influence of the witches and his wife, Lady Macbeth which leads him to alter his personality and lose some of his redeeming features. This in turn turns him into the butcher that Malcom describes.

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