March 30, 2003

The best news!!! My mom finally gave in, and I get my own domain name! So...in about a week or two, angelicdisaster.net will be up! *yays* Until then...I'm mostly going to be working on the tCoS, OotF, and Te sites....so no more updates for a while.

However...some other cool news...some of my graphics are going to Art Districts Friday. ^.^

Rufus is better chocolate covered!

According to the Encarta dictionary, ambition is a desire for success: a strong feeling of wanting to be successful in life and achieve great things. Ambition can play a large role in someone’s life, especially if he or she is led on by mysterious (or not so mysterious) forces. This drive to achieve great things can be both a blessing and a curse, as seen in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The lead character, after whom the play is named, discovers that ambition can be quite deadly.

From the beginning, Macbeth was driven by ambition. He lived his life as a sort of general in King Duncan of Scotland’s army, a ‘thane of Glamis,” to be precise. It was an honor to be such, and an early indication of the man he was. Macbeth wasn’t just some silly low class warrior, he was a thane, and a ‘kinsmen of the king” (Act I, Scene VII). At first, this was enough for the Thane of Glamis, but a strange visit by three weird sisters changed everything.

Those three simple lines changed everything for the Thane. Seemingly innocent words poisoned Macbeth’s mind, though at the time he thought little of if. After all, what could these three weird sisters know? He quickly found out. Near the end of Act I, Scene III, Ross and Angus, noblemen of Scotland, greet him with spectacular news. He is now the Thane of Cawdor.

The prophecy came true. The weird sisters had been correct in their predictions.

Yet there was more to come. Immediately Macbeth sent a letter to his wife, Lady Macbeth, with the amazing news of his promotion, as well as the other prediction by the weird sisters, the prophecy of becoming king. Lady Macbeth, a woman with more ambition than a person ought to have, quickly made plans. She had a heart filled with wickedness, as proved by Act 1 Scene V-

As soon as Macbeth returned to his castle, Inverness, his wife and her plans of murder greeted him. Her urge to become a murderer was fueled by ambition and desire to become queen, creating a monstrous character that continually egged on Macbeth in his terrible deeds.

In fact, Macbeth did not wish to kill King Duncan, as he had honor and integrity. However, Lady Macbeth, in her drive for power, berated the man, claiming that she would do anything for him, even kill her own child.

LADY M. How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums, and dash’s the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this (Act 1, Scene VII ).

This statement not only spurred Macbeth into action; it also showed the character of Lady Macbeth. She was little more than a slightly psychotic woman with a dangerous thirst for power. Her ambition goaded her husband into an act of murder.

One act of murder quickly turned into two. Afraid of what the weird sister’s said about his friend Banquo’s children, he ordered the murder of them all. Ambition had poisoned the mind of Lady Macbeth, and finally completely spilled into Macbeth. He was unnerved by the fact that the sister’s proclaimed Banquo’s sons to be kings, while upon his head was “placed a fruitless crown” (Act III, Scene 1).

Yet the crown came with a price. Not only did Macbeth come under suspicion from Macduff, another Scottish nobleman; he also became paranoid and even more homicidal. He ordered the deaths of Macduff’s family, children and all, in Act IV, and quickly turned again to the witchcraft of the weird sisters when he started fearing repercussions.

Unfortunately for him, the weird sisters only served to remove all doubt from his mind and turn him into a murderous machine, as he believed he could not be killed. The sister’s conjured up apparitions that proclaimed “none of woman born shall harm Macbeth” (Act IV, Scene I) and that “Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be until Great Birman wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against him.”(Act IV, Scene I).

In the end, it didn’t matter. Lady Macbeth, the main source of ambition in the first part of the play, became the victim of sleepwalks where she cried and tried to repeatedly wash her hands of the unseen blood on them. “Out damned spot, out I say!” (Act V, Scene I) symbolizes the extreme guilt the formerly ambitious woman felt. The guilt and shame of the murders drove her to suicide.

Amazingly enough, Macbeth seemed unperturbed by the news of his wife’s death. By this time he was running off of his own ambitions and didn’t need a hen-pecking wife to tell him to seize power. Yet soon after Lady Macbeth’s death, Macbeth joined her in death. Ambitions made him blind to the truth and Macduff, husband and father to a murdered family, killed him.

It was ambition that drove an honest and caring man to murder. It was the prophecies of three mischievous witches that thrusted Macbeth into the world of sin. It was the desire for power that made Lady Macbeth into the cold-hearted villain she is remembered for. The ambitions of the husband and wife team created vile monsters that are forever remembered in the minds of the masses.