POWER CORRUPTS!! MACBETH

Power Corrupts is a huge theme that I believe was all caused by superstition of the witches. Everyone in the book was corrupted in someway or another some caused others to be corrupted and those others made others corrupted. It is like a huge corruption waterfall. This is a quote that is an example of Lady Macbeth being corrupted, “The raven himself hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements.” P.50 Lady Macbeth. This quote is saying that Lady Macbeth will do anything to become queen and she convinces her husband Macbeth to do the bidding as she acts all sweet and innocent like a good house wife. She got corrupted by power before she even found out about what the witches had said.

In Macbeth, Macbeth him self wasn’t the first one to be corrupted, I believe that his wife kind of triggered the corruption waterfall. When she said to Macbeth; “O, Never shall sun that morrow see!”P.52 Lady Macbeth, She is telling Macbeth to kill King Duncan so she can gain power. The quote goes on to say to keep a friendly face and trick him to make him believe he’s welcome and make him feel as comfortable as can be so he will sleep soundly.

Cynical Lady Macbeth corrupts her husband to the point where he can’t stop killing people because he becoming king wasn’t good enough for them. He keeps thinking that people are out there to threaten and plot behind his back and take away his power. When no one right away is trying to, later on when everyone starts realizing what is happening then people want to try to get rid of him.

“This is spoken like a man. Come, let’s go to the king. Our army is ready; we lack nothing except permission to leave. Macbeth is ripe to be shaken, and even the heavenly powers are arming themselves. Take whatever comfort you can: no night is so long that it doesn’t end in day.” P.207 Act 4 Scene 3 Malcolm. This quote from Malcolm is saying how he and Macduff are leaving confidently to go fight Macbeth and put the crown on the head of the right air to the throne. They knew they had to put a stop to Macbeth before he was even more corrupted and killed more people.

It turns out by the end of the book, Lady Macbeth is so corrupted that she kills her self because she can’t handle the guilt of killing so many people. Right after she killed herself, Malcom and Macduff declared war on Macbeth and secretly attacked out of the forest. Which made the witches prophecy come true when they warned him that the forest would attack him and that would be the day that he would fall. Macbeth was reflective on this when his messenger was telling him the woods were moving. Macbeth wasn’t prepared for the fight though because he was too argumentative about weather or not the woods were actually moving.


Macbeth becoming corrupt lead to his and his wife’s downfall, she was bitter and he because arrogant and they were both careless. They both became corrupted by the tiniest little bit of power. Power corrupts made the book suspenseful and tense because you didn’t know what Macbeth’s next move would be.