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Unit 5: Macbeth: Detailed Analysis of the Text

As the play nears its bloody conclusion, Macbeth’s tragic flaw comes to the forefront: like Duncan Notes
before him, his character is too trusting. He takes the witches’ prophesies at face value, never realizing
that things are seldom what they seem—an ironic flaw, given his own treachery. He thus foolishly
fortifies his castle with the few men who remain, banking on the fact that the events that the
apparitions foretold could not come true. But in fact the English army does bring Birnam Wood to
Dunsinane. And Macduff, who has indeed been “untimely ripped” from his mother’s womb,
advances to kill Macbeth. The witches have equivocated; they told him a double truth, concealing
the complex reality within a framework that seems simple.
It is fitting that the play ends as it began—with a victorious battle in which a valiant hero kills a
traitor and holds high the severed head. The first we hear of Macbeth in Act 1 is the story of his
bravery in battle, wherein he decapitated Macdonwald’s and displayed it on the castle battlements.
At the end of the tragedy, Macbeth—himself a traitor to Duncan and his family—is treated in exactly
the same manner. After killing Macbeth, Macduff enters with Macbeth’s severed head and exclaims
“behold where stands / Th’usurper’s cursed head” the play thus ends with the completion of a
parallel structure.
One moral of the story is that the course of fate cannot be changed. The events that the Weird Sisters
predicted and set in motion at the beginning of the play happen exactly as predicted, no matter
what the characters do to change them. Macbeth tries his hardest to force fate to work to his bidding,
but to no avail. Banquo still becomes the father of kings and Macbeth still falls to a man not born of
woman. The man who triumphs in the end is the one who did nothing to change the fate prescribed
for him. The prophecy is self-fulfilling.

Illustrate that fate can not be changed in context of the play Macbeth.
The river of time thus flows on, despite the struggles of man. Although Macbeth’s reign of terror
has made “the frame of things disjoint,” by the end of the play the tide of time has smoothed over
Scotland. The unnatural uprising of Macbeth now in the past, Macduff comments that “the time is
free”. And Macbeth’s life proves to be indeed a “tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing”. Time washes over his meaningless, bloody history: Banquo’s family will give
rise to the line of Stuart kings and Malcolm will regain the throne his father left him—all exactly as
if Macbeth had never dared to kill Duncan.
Self Assessment

Multiple Choice Questions:

11. As the act 4 opens, the witches carry on the theme
(a) doubling and equivocation
(b) prophecy
(c) doubling
(d) equivocation.

12. In her sleepwalking, Lady Macbeth plays out which of the following theme that
runs throughout the play?
(a) Prophecy and equivocation
(b) Washing and cleansing
(c) Wickedness
(d) Cleansing and wickedness.

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