Macbeth isn’t a book, it’s a play written by William Shakespear. For a brief summary, it’s about a man, and to an extent, his wife, who deal with getting power, maintaining power, and the consequences of having power. Macbeth is probably the second most well known play by Shakespear, the first being Hamlet. It’s also under half of the length of Hamlet. Macbeth is a social tragedy, or a tragedy of disorder. It’s also an unusual tragedy, usually in tragic plays, the main character does a crime without knowing all the facts. Like if I killed someone who I thought to be one person but it was actually someone else. In Macbeth, Macbeth is very aware of what he was doing. He wound up trying to kill the king, and he did, and he knew that was wrong. Anyways, for this play, I’d like to talk about three things.

The first is if redemption for terrible actions is worth getting. At the end of the play, when Macbeth, who was once a hero, is straight-up evil, he famously says this quote, "I am in blood Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er". He’s basically saying, he’s killed so many people that there’s no point in changing his ways. He was facing eternal damnation the moment he killed Duncan (the king), so being worse won’t change his fate, and neither will being good. Like if Hitler was alive and if he tried to become a better person, nothing he could do would ever change anyone’s opinion on him.

Another thing I wanted to talk about is the tendencies for cruelty that can be found in people. Macbeth used to be a hero. Everyone loved him, he became the thane of cawdor, and people respected him. However, we first see him cutting someone from their mouth to their stomach during war, something that suggests he’s not an honorable thane (or knight). I wonder why some people become okay with obsessive violence and others don’t. Obviously, most people have never used obsessive violence, but there are studies showing that under the right circumstances, people will accept and possibly like hurting people and/or being cruel. Banquo, a fellow thane, was told that his sons would become kings, and yet he, unlike Macbeth, never killed a kinsman.

Lastly, I found the topic of gender interesting in Macbeth. If you read the play, you’ll see all the references to manliness and femininity. The men are often coaxed into doing things by attacking their masculinity, and Lady Macbeth (one of a few women characters and Macbeth’s wife) once called to the gods to stop her softness and feminine traits so she could convince Macbeth to kill Duncan. So, the characters in this story think that masculine traits are what makes someone successful, but all their troubles are caused by these “manly” actions. Shakespear suggests that a good person is honorable, restrained, and brave, and that confusing cruelty for manliness is a grave mistake.

The main take-away I got from this play was to be exceptional and wait for the good to happen to you, rather than by forcibly taking it.