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How is Macbeth Established as a Tragic Hero in Act 1
A tragic hero is most often defined as a character (usually the protagonist) who has a fatal flaw or
hamartia that leads to their downfall
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When in act i
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He is depicted as ‘valour’s minion’ via a semantic field of his
exceptional bravery with epithets such as ‘valiant’, ‘noble’ and ‘brave’
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Moreover, Macbeth in his first soliloquy deliberates fairly extensively on the morass that is the murder of
his king, his state of mind appears fractured as the text is littered with punctuation and indecisiveness
and this culminates in a decision not to act at all, ‘if chance will have [him] king’ it will happen ‘without
[his] stir’
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This adjective is also reminiscent of its homophonous twin, wrapped,
reinforcing the idea of his powerlessness in being bound by the witches’ words
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vii, Macbeth
soliloquises again, this time it is a controlled and coherent passage - shown through the frequent use of
conjunctions - where he reflects on the moral higher ground, and the wrongness of ‘it’ – his euphemising
of Duncan’s murder highlights his desire to distance himself from what he understands is immoral
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This is affirmed
by the idea that Lady Macbeth has to rid herself of ‘milk’ to compensate for her husband’s innate
goodness and that she wants to ‘pour [her] spirits into [his] ear’
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Spirits also
connotes to the supernatural which further diabolises Lady Macbeth due to her links to this realm, and
finally draws parallel between the poisoning in Hamlet – Macbeth is unwittingly corrupted
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In Macbeth’s case this is his ‘vaulting ambition’ which
stimulates his initial curiosity in the witches’ prophecies and later that he is able to murder Duncan at all
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This line of reasoning may become problematic for a number of reasons
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That leaves only the idea that he lost his volition in encountering
the witches and that murdering Duncan was simply the result of exonerating influences to redeem him
and evoke the sympathy of a contemporary audience
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This creates another issue, namely the fact Macbeth must bear responsibility for
his own downfall to be a tragic hero, he must have free will
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ii when he beheads another on the battlefield,
was fitting

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