HL Sample Answers


Higher Level – Sample Answers 2013


(i) ‘The variety of significant insights that we gain into Macbeth’s mind proves critical in shaping our understanding of his complex character.’ Discuss this view, supporting your answer with suitable reference to the play, Macbeth.


Macbeth is truly a complex and fascinating villain. He commits a number of horrendous crimes in the play, but Macbeth is not simply a ‘butcher’ as Malcolm labels him. Despite his abhorrent villainy, Macbeth evokes sympathy in the audience. Shakespeare encourages us to feel sorry for a once noble man as we watch him succumb to evil and the allure of power. Through his soliloquy and asides, the audience gains insight into Macbeth’s mind. These private expressions of his innermost fears and desires shape our appreciation for a character who we both condemn, but ultimately come to pity. As the tragic hero of the play, Macbeth is a flawed character. His inflated pride and ambition


lead him to his downfall. Macbeth’s excessive ambition is immediately apparent in his asides in the early scenes in the play. When he first meets the witches, Macbeth is told a series of equivocal half-truths, prophesising that he will be King. The audience immediately gains insight into Macbeth’s mind as he reveals his ambition in his asides. When it is confirmed to him that he has become Thane of Cawdor as well as Thane of Glamis, Macbeth’s mind immediately turns to the crown: ‘Two truths are told / As happy prologues to the swelling act / Of the imperial theme.’ Later in Act I, while standing before Duncan, Macbeth’s ambition is revealed to the audience


through his aside. Macbeth sees Duncan’s heir, Prince Malcolm, as an obstacle to overcome on his journey to absolute power: ‘That is a step / On which I must fall down, or else o’er-leap, / For in my way it lies.’ He knows that his ambition can only be realised through evil acts but hopes to suppress his conscience:


‘Let not light see my black and deep desires: The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be, Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.’


This aside is intriguing in its complexity. On the one hand, Macbeth is embracing evil and


darkly plans his way to the throne. However, he is still a man with a conscience, a man who understands the immorality of what he is about to do. Macbeth’s moral compass allows him to appreciate the good; the fact that he actively chooses to ignore it makes his actions all the more damning. This idea is developed further in Macbeth’s first soliloquy. As he waits for Lady Macbeth, he


reflects deeply on the moral significance of killing Duncan. He offers a number of reasons for not going ahead with the murder. He fears punishment on earth and in the afterlife and he worries that ‘Bloody instructions…return / To plague the inventor’. Macbeth recognises his moral obligations to Duncan who is his King and guest, and that he ‘should against his murderer shut the door / Not bear the knife’. Furthermore, Macbeth fears that as a virtuous king, Duncan’s death would spark a public outcry, ‘his virtues / Will plead like angels…against / The deep damnation of his taking-off’.


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Macbeth


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