Macbeth

...

Macbeth wanted to attain kingship by simply waiting for his turn and being honored by the former king and his people, instead he struggles with his wife's constant dictations. Many argue that it was his former role in being a war hero that made it hard to acclimate back to society when he returns, almost like a common endeavor know today when soldiers return from war they suffer from PTSD(post traumatic stress disorder) or a demobilisation crisis. Even though he's received many commendations for what he's done on the field, he might feel like he must attain and assert himself in civilization the same way he would on the battlefield. This would explain why he'd feel like he must kill to get the job done. Also this delineates to the fact that it may have been his crippled ego that drove him to murder. As the play begins it shows a middle aged, childless macbeth that has a rocky love life and has no interest in anything outside of war. Similar to lady macbeth, they are driven by this compulsion that they must do something to fill this void they have to make them feel better about their lives, and that involved killing King Duncan. Notice that the following murders that macbeth commits really has no significant impact on him as much as the first. The first murder is arguably the most predominant cause of him going crazy. “Macbeth's subsequent two assassinations, of Banquo in act 3, and of Macduff's wife and children in acts 4–5, either are ignored, or are treated simply as efforts to secure the usurped crown, or perhaps as a kind of Freudian "repetition compulsion"—the blooded man's first heinous kill engendering serial slayings. Neither of the subsequent murders has been accorded its own distinctive meaning and psychological motivation; they are seen as mere shadowy reenactments of the Oedipal complex which is presumed to underlie the one essential crime, the slaying of the patriarchal king “ (Joseph, Rosenblum) The rest of the homicides are simply trying to contradict themselves, by committing a murder to justify a murder is senseless and each time made macbeth’s condition worse mentally, therefore he continued to hallucinate and doubt himself more towards the end of the play.

In conclusion, Macbeth's life was filled with ambition cupidity, murder, and loneliness. All you gotta do is give a man a reason, and you have yourself an assassination at the throne. The ultimate quarantine brought upon knowing one man's legacy ends with one's own life, can drive anybody to anguish.

- Rosenblum, Joseph. "Macbeth: Modern Criticism and Critical Controversies." In Baker, William, and Kenneth Womack, eds. The Facts On File Companion to Shakespeare. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2012. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 3 Mar. 2016 >.

- http://history1900s.about.com/od/1960s/p/charlesmanson.htm

- http://www.criminaljusticeschoolinfo.com/serial-killer.html