Macbeth is a story with very universal themes, even to this day it presents themes that we can see and recognize in our everyday lives. In this essay, we will analyze the modern values / universal themes in the character Macbeth and how literature reflects society, culture, place, and / or history.
Macbeth is a story of ambition and that is a subject Shakespeare utilizes the main character’s thought processes to pass on and furthermore demonstrate the threats of being too ambitious. A case of this is when Macbeth says “My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man That function is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is but what is not.” (Macbeth, P.331). This story conveys a vital message as it teaches the reader to practice restraint with regards to their secret desires and to know about the results that those desires could hold. Macbeth, amid the time the play was composed, would have been viewed as a villain , in any case, readers can see that Macbeth was just human and really wanted to stand amazed at what could be as opposed to tolerating his new title of Thane of Cawdor. “Macbeth reduces all that has been exciting him in the contemplation of the death of Duncan to ‘only vaulting ambition’, the mere desire to be King. This would seem to justify the claim that Macbeth has not a predisposition to murder; he has merely an inordinate ambition that makes murder itself seem to be a lesser evil than failure to achieve the crown.” (Foakes, 2013, P.9)
Now we will discuss how literature reflects society, culture, place, and / or history.
The relationship of literature and society has been variously conceived. Three general assumptions are that literature reflects society and culture, that it serves as a means of social control, and that it influences attitudes and behavior of people in ways considered in some respects desirable in others undesirable. (Albrecht, 1956, p. 722) This literature reflects modern society as it is human nature to give into temptation when pushed just far enough.
In this essay we firstly analyzed the theme and value of ambition in the character Macbeth. We learned a vital lesson about how to practice self control with regards to our secret desires and to be cautious about the results that those desires could hold. And finally we learned about how literature can often reflect on society, culture, place and or history. The relationship between the two really shows us how similar old and newer societies really are.
