essay of macbeth play

William Shakespeare

• Literature Notes
• Major Themes
• Macbeth at a Glance
• Play Summary
• About Macbeth
• Character List
• Summary and Analysis
• Act I: Scene 1
• Act I: Scene 2
• Act I: Scene 3
• Act I: Scene 4
• Act I: Scene 5
• Act I: Scene 6
• Act I: Scene 7
• Act II: Scene 1
• Act II: Scene 2
• Act II: Scene 3
• Act II: Scene 4
• Act III: Scene 1
• Act III: Scene 2
• Act III: Scene 3
• Act III: Scene 4
• Act III: Scene 5
• Act III: Scene 6
• Act IV: Scene 1
• Act IV: Scene 2
• Act IV: Scene 3
• Act V: Scene 1
• Act V: Scene 2
• Act V: Scene 3
• Act V: Scene 4
• Act V: Scene 5
• Act V: Scene 6
• Act V: Scene 7
• Act V: Scene 8
• Act V: Scene 9
• Character Analysis
• Lady Macbeth
• Character Map
• William Shakespeare Biography
• Critical Essays
• Major Symbols and Motifs
• Macbeth on the Stage
• Famous Quotes
• Film Versions
• Full Glossary
• Essay Questions
• Practice Projects
• Cite this Literature Note

Critical Essays Major Themes

The Fall of Man

The ancient Greek notion of tragedy concerned the fall of a great man, such as a king, from a position of superiority to a position of humility on account of his ambitious pride, or hubris . To the Greeks, such arrogance in human behavior was punishable by terrible vengeance. The tragic hero was to be pitied in his fallen plight but not necessarily forgiven: Greek tragedy frequently has a bleak outcome. Christian drama, on the other hand, always offers a ray of hope; hence, Macbeth ends with the coronation of Malcolm , a new leader who exhibits all the correct virtues for a king.

Macbeth exhibits elements that reflect the greatest Christian tragedy of all: the Fall of Man. In the Genesis story, it is the weakness of Adam, persuaded by his wife (who has in turn been seduced by the devil) which leads him to the proud assumption that he can "play God." But both stories offer room for hope: Christ will come to save mankind precisely because mankind has made the wrong choice through his own free will. In Christian terms, although Macbeth has acted tyrannically, criminally, and sinfully, he is not entirely beyond redemption in heaven.

Fortune, Fate, and Free Will

Fortune is another word for chance. The ancient view of human affairs frequently referred to the "Wheel of Fortune," according to which human life was something of a lottery. One could rise to the top of the wheel and enjoy the benefits of superiority, but only for a while. With an unpredictable swing up or down, one could equally easily crash to the base of the wheel.

Fate, on the other hand, is fixed. In a fatalistic universe, the length and outcome of one's life (destiny) is predetermined by external forces. In Macbeth, the Witches represent this influence. The play makes an important distinction: Fate may dictate what will be, but how that destiny comes about is a matter of chance (and, in a Christian world such as Macbeth's) of man's own choice or free will.

Although Macbeth is told he will become king, he is not told how to achieve the position of king: that much is up to him. We cannot blame him for becoming king (it is his Destiny), but we can blame him for the way in which he chooses to get there (by his own free will).

Kingship and Natural Order

Macbeth is set in a society in which the notion of honor to one's word and loyalty to one's superiors is absolute. At the top of this hierarchy is the king, God's representative on Earth. Other relationships also depend on loyalty: comradeship in warfare, hospitality of host towards guest, and the loyalty between husband and wife. In this play, all these basic societal relationships are perverted or broken. Lady Macbeth's domination over her husband, Macbeth's treacherous act of regicide, and his destruction of comradely and family bonds, all go against the natural order of things.

The medieval and renaissance view of the world saw a relationship between order on earth, the so-called microcosm , and order on the larger scale of the universe, or macrocosm. Thus, when Lennox and the Old Man talk of the terrifying alteration in the natural order of the universe — tempests, earthquakes, darkness at noon, and so on — these are all reflections of the breakage of the natural order that Macbeth has brought about in his own microcosmic world.

Disruption of Nature

Violent disruptions in nature — tempests, earthquakes, darkness at noon, and so on — parallel the unnatural and disruptive death of the monarch Duncan.

The medieval and renaissance view of the world saw a relationship between order on earth, the so-called microcosm, and order on the larger scale of the universe, or macrocosm. Thus, when Lennox and the Old Man talk of the terrifying alteration in the natural order of the universe (nature), these are all reflections of the breakage of the natural order that Macbeth has brought about in his own microcosmic world (society).

Many critics see the parallel between Duncan's death and disorder in nature as an affirmation of the divine right theory of kingship. As we witness in the play, Macbeth's murder of Duncan and his continued tyranny extends the disorder of the entire country.

Gender Roles

Lady Macbeth is the focus of much of the exploration of gender roles in the play. As Lady Macbeth propels her husband toward committing Duncan's murder, she indicates that she must take on masculine characteristics. Her most famous speech — located in Act I, Scene 5 — addresses this issue.

Clearly, gender is out of its traditional order. This disruption of gender roles is also presented through Lady Macbeth's usurpation of the dominate role in the Macbeth's marriage; on many occasions, she rules her husband and dictates his actions.

Reason Versus Passion

During their debates over which course of action to take, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth use different persuasive strategies. Their differences can easily be seen as part of a thematic study of gender roles. However, in truth, the difference in ways Macbeth and Lady Macbeth rationalize their actions is essential to understanding the subtle nuances of the play as a whole.

Macbeth is very rational, contemplating the consequences and implications of his actions. He recognizes the political, ethical, and religious reason why he should not commit regicide. In addition to jeopardizing his afterlife, Macbeth notes that regicide is a violation of Duncan's "double trust" that stems from Macbeth's bonds as a kinsman and as a subject.

On the other hand, Lady Macbeth has a more passionate way of examining the pros and cons of killing Duncan. She is motivated by her feelings and uses emotional arguments to persuade her husband to commit the evil act.

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Home › Drama Criticism › Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 25, 2020 • ( 0 )

Macbeth . . . is done upon a stronger and more systematic principle of contrast than any other of Shakespeare’s plays. It moves upon the verge of an abyss, and is a constant struggle between life and death. The action is desperate and the reaction is dreadful. It is a huddling together of fierce extremes, a war of opposite natures which of them shall destroy the other. There is nothing but what has a violent end or violent beginnings. The lights and shades are laid on with a determined hand; the transitions from triumph to despair, from the height of terror to the repose of death, are sudden and startling; every passion brings in its fellow-contrary, and the thoughts pitch and jostle against each other as in the dark. The whole play is an unruly chaos of strange and forbidden things, where the ground rocks under our feet. Shakespear’s genius here took its full swing, and trod upon the farthest bounds of nature and passion.

—William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays

Macbeth completes William Shakespeare’s great tragic quartet while expanding, echoing, and altering key elements of Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear into one of the most terrifying stage experiences. Like Hamlet, Macbeth treats the  consequences  of  regicide,  but  from  the  perspective  of  the  usurpers,  not  the  dispossessed.  Like  Othello,  Macbeth   centers  its  intrigue  on  the  intimate  relations  of  husband  and  wife.  Like  Lear,  Macbeth   explores  female  villainy,  creating in Lady Macbeth one of Shakespeare’s most complex, powerful, and frightening woman characters. Different from Hamlet and Othello, in which the tragic action is reserved for their climaxes and an emphasis on cause over effect, Macbeth, like Lear, locates the tragic tipping point at the play’s outset to concentrate on inexorable consequences. Like Othello, Macbeth, Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy, achieves an almost unbearable intensity by eliminating subplots, inessential characters, and tonal shifts to focus almost exclusively on the crime’s devastating impact on husband and wife.

What is singular about Macbeth, compared to the other three great Shakespearean tragedies, is its villain-hero. If Hamlet mainly executes rather than murders,  if  Othello  is  “more  sinned  against  than  sinning,”  and  if  Lear  is  “a  very foolish fond old man” buffeted by surrounding evil, Macbeth knowingly chooses  evil  and  becomes  the  bloodiest  and  most  dehumanized  of  Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists. Macbeth treats coldblooded, premeditated murder from the killer’s perspective, anticipating the psychological dissection and guilt-ridden expressionism that Feodor Dostoevsky will employ in Crime and Punishment . Critic Harold Bloom groups the protagonist as “the culminating figure  in  the  sequence  of  what  might  be  called  Shakespeare’s  Grand  Negations: Richard III, Iago, Edmund, Macbeth.” With Macbeth, however, Shakespeare takes us further inside a villain’s mind and imagination, while daringly engaging  our  sympathy  and  identification  with  a  murderer.  “The  problem  Shakespeare  gave  himself  in  Macbeth  was  a  tremendous  one,”  Critic  Wayne  C. Booth has stated.

Take a good man, a noble man, a man admired by all who know him—and  destroy  him,  not  only  physically  and  emotionally,  as  the  Greeks  destroyed their heroes, but also morally and intellectually. As if this were not difficult enough as a dramatic hurdle, while transforming him into one of the most despicable mortals conceivable, maintain him as a tragic hero—that is, keep him so sympathetic that, when he comes to his death, the audience will pity rather than detest him and will be relieved to see him out of his misery rather than pleased to see him destroyed.

Unlike Richard III, Iago, or Edmund, Macbeth is less a virtuoso of villainy or an amoral nihilist than a man with a conscience who succumbs to evil and obliterates the humanity that he is compelled to suppress. Macbeth is Shakespeare’s  greatest  psychological  portrait  of  self-destruction  and  the  human  capacity for evil seen from inside with an intimacy that horrifies because of our forced identification with Macbeth.

Although  there  is  no  certainty  in  dating  the  composition  or  the  first performance  of  Macbeth,   allusions  in  the  play  to  contemporary  events  fix the  likely  date  of  both  as  1606,  shortly  after  the  completion  and  debut  of  King Lear. Scholars have suggested that Macbeth was acted before James I at Hampton  Court  on  August  7,  1606,  during  the  royal  visit  of  King  Christian IV of Denmark and that it may have been especially written for a royal performance. Its subject, as well as its version of Scottish history, suggest an effort both to flatter and to avoid offending the Scottish king James. Macbeth is a chronicle play in which Shakespeare took his major plot elements from Raphael  Holinshed’s  Chronicles  of  England,  Scotland  and  Ireland  (1587),  but  with  significant  modifications.  The  usurping  Macbeth’s  decade-long  (and  largely  successful)  reign  is  abbreviated  with  an  emphasis  on  the  internal  and external destruction caused by Macbeth’s seizing the throne and trying to hold onto it. For the details of King Duncan’s death, Shakespeare used Holinshed’s  account  of  the  murder  of  an  earlier  king  Duff  by  Donwald,  who cast suspicion on drunken servants and whose ambitious wife played a significant role in the crime. Shakespeare also eliminated Banquo as the historical Macbeth’s co-conspirator in the murder to promote Banquo’s innocence and nobility in originating a kingly line from which James traced his legitimacy. Additional prominence is also given to the Weird Sisters, whom Holinshed only mentions in their initial meeting of Macbeth on the heath. The prophetic warning “beware Macduff” is attributed to “certain wizards in whose words Macbeth put great confidence.” The importance of the witches and  the  occult  in  Macbeth   must  have  been  meant  to  appeal  to  a  king  who  produced a treatise, Daemonologie (1597), on witch-craft.

The uncanny sets the tone of moral ambiguity from the play’s outset as the three witches gather to encounter Macbeth “When the battle’s lost and won” in an inverted world in which “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Nothing in the play will be what it seems, and the tragedy results from the confusion and  conflict  between  the  fair—honor,  nobility,  duty—and  the  foul—rank  ambition and bloody murder. Throughout the play nature reflects the disorder and violence of the action. Opening with thunder and lightning, the drama is set in a Scotland contending with the rebellion of the thane (feudal lord) of Cawdor, whom the fearless and courageous Macbeth has vanquished on the battlefield. The play, therefore, initially establishes Macbeth as a dutiful and trusted vassal of the king, Duncan of Scotland, deserving to be rewarded with the rebel’s title for restoring peace and order in the realm. “What he hath lost,” Duncan declares, “noble Macbeth hath won.” News of this honor reaches Macbeth through the witches, who greet him both as the thane of Cawdor and “king hereafter” and his comrade-in-arms Banquo as one who “shalt get kings, though thou be none.” Like the ghost in Hamlet , the  Weird  Sisters  are  left  purposefully  ambiguous  and  problematic.  Are  they  agents  of  fate  that  determine  Macbeth’s  doom,  predicting  and  even  dictating  the  inevitable,  or  do  they  merely  signal  a  latency  in  Macbeth’s  ambitious character?

When he is greeted by the king’s emissaries as thane of Cawdor, Macbeth begins to wonder if the first predictions of the witches came true and what will come of the second of “king hereafter”:

This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor. If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, Against the use of nature? Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings: My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man that function Is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is But what is not.

Macbeth  will  be  defined  by  his  “horrible  imaginings,”  by  his  considerable  intellectual and imaginative capacity both to understand what he knows to be true and right and his opposed desires and their frightful consequences. Only Hamlet has as fully a developed interior life and dramatized mental processes as  Macbeth  in  Shakespeare’s  plays.  Macbeth’s  ambition  is  initially  checked  by his conscience and by his fear of the unforeseen consequence of violating moral  laws.  Shakespeare  brilliantly  dramatizes  Macbeth’s  mental  conflict in near stream of consciousness, associational fashion:

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly. If th’assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease, success: that but this blow Might be the be all and the end all, here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We’d jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgement here, that we but teach Bloody instructions which, being taught, return To plague th’inventor. This even-handed justice Commends th’ingredients of our poison’d chalice To our own lips. He’s here in double trust: First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the door, Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued against The deep damnation of his taking-off, And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself And falls on the other.

Macbeth’s “spur” comes in the form of Lady Macbeth, who plays on her husband’s selfimage of courage and virility to commit to the murder. She also reveals her own shocking cancellation of gender imperatives in shaming her husband into action, in one of the most shocking passages of the play:

. . . I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me. I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn As you have done to this.

Horrified  at  his  wife’s  resolve  and  cold-blooded  calculation  in  devising  the  plot,  Macbeth  urges  his  wife  to  “Bring  forth  menchildren  only,  /  For  thy  undaunted mettle should compose / Nothing but males,” but commits “Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.”

With the decision to kill the king taken, the play accelerates unrelentingly through a succession of powerful scenes: Duncan’s and Banquo’s murders, the banquet scene in which Banquo’s ghost appears, Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking, and Macbeth’s final battle with Macduff, Thane of Fife. Duncan’s offstage murder  contrasts  Macbeth’s  “horrible  imaginings”  concerning  the  implications and Lady Macbeth’s chilling practicality. Macbeth’s question, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?” is answered by his wife: “A little water clears us of this deed; / How easy is it then!” The knocking at the door of the castle, ominously signaling the revelation of the crime, prompts the play’s one comic respite in the Porter’s drunken foolery that he is at the door of “Hell’s Gate” controlling the entrance of the damned. With the fl ight of Duncan’s sons, who fear for their lives, causing them to be suspected as murderers, Macbeth is named king, and the play’s focus shifts to Macbeth’s keeping and consolidating the power he has seized. Having gained what the witches prophesied, Macbeth next tries to prevent their prediction that Banquo’s descendants will reign by setting assassins to kill Banquo and his son, Fleance. The plan goes awry, and Fleance escapes, leaving Macbeth again at the mercy of the witches’ prophecy. His psychic breakdown is dramatized by his seeing Banquo’s ghost occupying Macbeth’s place at the banquet. Pushed to  the  edge  of  mental  collapse,  Macbeth  steels  himself  to  meet  the  witches  again to learn what is in store for him: “Iam in blood,” he declares, “Stepp’d in so far that, should Iwade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

The witches reassure him that “none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth” and that he will never be vanquished until “Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill / Shall come against him.” Confident that he is invulnerable, Macbeth  responds  to  the  rebellion  mounted  by  Duncan’s  son  Malcolm  and  Macduff, who has joined him in England, by ordering the slaughter of Lady Macduff and her children. Macbeth has progressed from a murderer in fulfillment of the witches predictions to a murderer (of Banquo) in order to subvert their predictions and then to pointless butchery that serves no other purpose than as an exercise in willful destruction. Ironically, Macbeth, whom his wife feared  was  “too  full  o’  the  milk  of  human  kindness  /  To  catch  the  nearest  way” to serve his ambition, displays the same cold calculation that frightened him  about  his  wife,  while  Lady  Macbeth  succumbs  psychically  to  her  own  “horrible  imaginings.”  Lady  Macbeth  relives  the  murder  as  she  sleepwalks,  Shakespeare’s version of the workings of the unconscious. The blood in her tormented  conscience  that  formerly  could  be  removed  with  a  little  water  is  now a permanent noxious stain in which “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten.” Women’s cries announcing her offstage death are greeted by Macbeth with detached indifference:

I have almost forgot the taste of fears: The time has been, my senses would have cool’d To hear a nightshriek, and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in’t. Ihave supp’d full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, Cannot once start me.

Macbeth reveals himself here as an emotional and moral void. Confirmation that “The Queen, my lord, is dead” prompts only the bitter comment, “She should have died hereafter.” For Macbeth, life has lost all meaning, refl ected in the bleakest lines Shakespeare ever composed:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

Time and the world that Macbeth had sought to rule are revealed to him as empty and futile, embodied in a metaphor from the theater with life as a histrionic, talentless actor in a tedious, pointless play.

Macbeth’s final testing comes when Malcolm orders his troops to camoufl  age  their  movement  by  carrying  boughs  from  Birnam  Woods  in  their march toward Dunsinane and from Macduff, whom he faces in combat and reveals that he was “from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripp’d,” that is, born by cesarean section and therefore not “of woman born.” This revelation, the final fulfillment of the witches’ prophecies, causes Macbeth to fl ee, but he is prompted  by  Macduff’s  taunt  of  cowardice  and  order  to  surrender  to  meet  Macduff’s challenge, despite knowing the deadly outcome:

Yet I will try the last. Before my body I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff, And damn’d be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!”

Macbeth  returns  to  the  world  of  combat  where  his  initial  distinctions  were  honorably earned and tragically lost.

The play concludes with order restored to Scotland, as Macduff presents Macbeth’s severed head to Malcolm, who is hailed as king. Malcolm may assert his control and diminish Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as “this dead butcher and his fiendlike queen,” but the audience knows more than that. We know what  Malcolm  does  not,  that  it  will  not  be  his  royal  line  but  Banquo’s  that  will eventually rule Scotland, and inevitably another round of rebellion and murder is to come. We also know in horrifying human terms the making of a butcher and a fiend who refuse to be so easily dismissed as aberrations.

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Read below our complete notes on “Macbeth”, a famous play by William Shakespeare. Our notes cover Macbeth summary, themes, characters, and analysis.

Introduction

Macbeth was written by William Shakespeare in either 1605 or 1606. Its full name is “The Tragedy of Macbeth”. It was first performed in around 1606.

The drama revolves around a Villain named Macbeth who is ambitious and brave but because of his thirst for power, he begins to do evil. He receives a prophecy from three witches that he will become the king of Scotland. To make this prophecy true, he kills the king of Scotland and many other people who become a threat to his throne. At the end he faces a downfall.

The play has many elements i.e. temptation, conspiracy, madness, pathos and destruction.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare Summary

This play portrays a tragic downfall of a brave warrior, Macbeth. After defeating the forces of Norway and Ireland, he receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that he will become the king of Scotland. The other part of the prophecy is that the children of Banquo, another Scottish general, will become the future kings. Macbeth is already made the Thane of Cowder. He is happy and ambitious after receiving the prophecy.

Afterwards, King Duncan declares that he will spend a night at Macbeth’s castle as a celebration of their victory. Macbeth informs Lady Macbeth about the King’s arrival and prophecies of witches. Lady Macbeth appears to be very evil. She makes the plan to kill the king and convinces Macbeth to act accordingly by challenging his manhood.

Lady Macbeth plans to get the chamberlains drunk to show them as culprits after murder. When everyone sleeps, they start acting upon their plan and Macbeth stabs Duncan with a knife and kills him. After that, Lady Macbeth stains the clothes and faces of chamberlains sitting outside the king’s chamber and puts the knives near them to show that they are the culprits.

The next morning, Macduff comes to Macbeth’s castle to receive the king but finds him dead. Subsequently, Macbeth kills the chamberlains to show anger towards king’s death and to show that he is innocent. Banquo discusses the certain issue with Macbeth and departs.

Later, Macbeth proclaims himself the king in front of everyone. He fears his friend Banquo because of the second part of the prophecy, so he arranges two murders to kill Banquo and his son, Fleance. Murderers kill Banquo but his son manages to escape outside the castle in the dark woods.

Although, he successfully executes his plans but he starts behaving abnormally during dinner. He starts witnessing Banquo’s ghost and Lady Macbeth gives excuses for his unusual behavior.

Afterwards, Macbeth again meets the witches and receives three prophecies; Beware of Macduff, none of woman born shall harm him and that he is safe until Burnam’s wood moves to Dunsinane hills. Macduff goes to England to meet Malcolm and plan revenge against Macbeth. They decide to take help from King Edward of England and plan to attack Scotland with 10,000 soldiers. Meanwhile, Ross comes and tells Macduff that his family has been killed by Macbeth.

Moreover, Lady Macbeth starts behaving abnormally because of the guilt of her crimes. Death of Macduff’s family increases her madness and she becomes ill. English army attacks and reaches towards Burnam’s wood and they plan that each soldier will carry a bush in front of him. It seems like the forest is moving towards Dunsinane and the Prophecy of witches becomes true.

Lady Macbeth dies and the war begins. Macbeth fights keeping in mind that no-one can kill him as everyone is born out of mother. He kills Seward’s son and disappears. Macduff finds him, tells him that he was born by cesarean-section and beheads him.

Afterwards, he declares Malcolm the king of Scotland and everyone curses Macbeth and Lady Macbeth for their cruelty.

Themes in Macbeth

Kingship vs. tyranny:.

In the play Duncan is always referred to as a “king” while Macbeth becomes known as “tyrant” when he comes to the throne. This is because of the qualities present in a good king and a tyrant.

Macbeth starts doing evil for the thirst of power and throne which shows his violent temperament and disloyalty towards the country.  He kills the king and other people who are a threat to his kingship.

On the other hand, Duncan is kind-hearted and loyal towards his country. At the end, Macbeth faces downfall because of his cruel and immoral nature.

Relationship between Cruelty and Masculinity:

This theme shows that violence is not just a male’s attribute, females can also show violence. It is explored by the character of Lady Macbeth and the three witches in this play.

As we can clearly see, how Lady Macbeth shows aggression, cruelty and violence. She plans to kill the king and forces Macbeth to follow her evil plan and to kill every person who she sees as a threat.

On the other hand, we can see three witches who seem cruel and evil from their conversations throughout the play.

Fate vs. Freewill:

Another major theme of this play is fate vs. freewill. The character of Macbeth and three witches represent this theme.

Although, Macbeth is told by the witches about his future that he will become the king but he is not told how to take the position of king. Prophecy of witches is fate but how to make it reality depends upon Macbeth’s freewill. Instead of waiting for the right time, he chooses a wrong path that leads him towards downfall.

Reason vs. Passion:

This theme is represented by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Throughout the play we can see the difference between their persuasive strategies.

Macbeth is very logical and clear-sighted. He knows that he is doing evil and the consequences of it. He feels guilty for breaking King Duncan’s trust but he is persuaded by his wife to do evil.

On the other hand, Lady Macbeth passionately examines the pros and cones of her plan of killing the king. She is an emotional and evil person who uses emotional arguments to convince her husband to do the crime.

Macbeth Characters Analysis

Macbeth is the villain of the play. His initial impression is of a brave and courageous warrior who has won the battle through his bravery and dedication. However, when he meets the three witches, his lack of strength of character and overly ambitious nature is revealed. Shakespeare tries to convey the effects of ambitious nature and self-doubt in a person with weak character.

When Macbeth receives the prophecy from witches he becomes happy but later he is persuaded by his wife’s emotional argument to kill the king. He is a rational person who knows the consequences of doing evil but he is also occupied by evil forces.

Moreover, he also starts behaving abnormally because of the guilt of the sins committed by him but again the thirst for power makes him strong and he begins to act according to his evil plans.

In the end of the play, Macduff beheads him and he faces a downfall.

Lady Macbeth:

Lady Macbeth is one of the Shakespeare’s most evil female characters. She is Macbeth’s wife and a deeply ambitious and cruel woman who lusts for power and position. Her first appearance in the play is when she is plotting Duncan’s murder. She is a cruel and ruthless woman who convinces her husband to commit a sin by challenging his manhood.

She represents the relationship between femininity and violence in the play. Macbeth says that Lady Macbeth is a masculine soul residing in a female body which shows that females can also be cruel and ruthless.

Moreover, she remains firm to her decision of murdering the king and persuades Macbeth but later on the guilt of sins makes her mad. She tries to wash away the invisible blood stains from her hands. Her strength becomes her weakness and she commits suicide by the close of the play.

The Three Witches:

The three witches are referred to as “weird sisters” in the play. They are the ones who give prophecy about Macbeth’s future and play upon him like puppeteers.

Macbeth believes in their prophecies which lead him towards darkness and downfall.  However, their true identity is unclear. Although, they are servants of Hecate but the play does not tell us whether they are independent agents playing with human lives or the agents of fate.

Furthermore, some of their prophecies seem fulfilling and some are acted upon by Macbeth.

Banquo is another Scottish General and Macbeth’s friend. He is a brave, ambitious and virtuous person unlike Macbeth.  He also receives a prophecy from witches that his children will come to the throne in future.  This prophecy becomes a threat to Macbeth’s kingship and he orders to kill Banquo and his son, Fleance. However, his son escapes but he is murdered.

Later, his ghost haunts Macbeth and he starts acting abnormally.

King Duncan:

He is the king of Scotland who is murdered by Macbeth for the lust of power and throne. He is a virtuous man and a good king who is faithful towards his country. His decision to pass the kingdom to his son, Malcolm, becomes the reason of his death.

Macduff is the thane of Scotland. He is loyal towards king and turns against Macbeth after discovering king’s death.  He flees to England to meet Malcolm where he comes to know about his family’s murder so he plans to take revenge from Macbeth. He also wants to unseat Macbeth from the throne.

Malcolm is the son of Duncan.  He flees to England fearfully after his father’s death. He raises an army there to take back his throne from Macbeth. In the end of the play, Malcolm becomes the king with the support of Macduff and England army.

He is Duncan’s son and Malcolm’s younger brother who flees to Ireland after his father’s death.

He is Banquo’s son who escapes the castle when murderers attempt to kill him. After that he does not appear in the play.

She is the goddess of three witches who guides them to plot mischief against Macbeth.  She is evil and weird.

Macbeth Literary Analysis

The play “Macbeth” portrays a tragic downfall of a brave warrior, Macbeth. At first he appears as a brave and courageous Army General who has won the battle through his bravery but later we come to know about his real self when he receives the prophecies from the three witches.  The prophecies are that Macbeth will become the king of Scotland soon and children of Banquo, another army general, will inherit the throne in future.

After these prophecies, Macbeth appears to be an evil, ruthless and overly ambitious person. He lacks the strength of character and starts doing evil to become the king. The thirst for power and position leads him towards a great downfall.

On the other hand, Lady Macbeth, a violent and ruthless woman, persuades him to murder the king because of the lust of throne and power. He is a masculine soul in a female body that is strong and overly ambitious about her plans. In the beginning she strongly acts upon her evil plans but later she cannot carry the burden of her sins that leads her towards madness. This shows that no matter how strongly one commits sins, at some point in life those sins overly burden him/her and haunt him/her.

Moreover, Banquo, who is faithful towards Duncan and does not plot evil to make the prophecy come true, is killed by Macbeth. But later on we discover that his ghost starts haunting Macbeth and he starts acting abnormally. It shows the contrast between personalities of the two, Macbeth and Banquo. Both are ambitious and brave but Macbeth is evil and Banquo is virtuous because he does not choose a wrong path to become more powerful.

Additionally, the king of Scotland named Duncan is also a virtuous and honored king who is killed by Macbeth because of his lust for throne. Duncan is referred to as ‘King’ throughout the play whereas Macbeth is referred to as a ‘Tyrant’ when he declares himself as a king. It shows the contrast between a good king and a tyrant. Macbeth murders every person who comes on his way of becoming the king. He is a wicked and immoral person who commits sins whereas Duncan is a moral person who rules the Scotland justly and peacefully.

The play also portrays the consequences and effects of thirst for power of a person who is morally weak and lacks the decisive power. Macbeth knows the consequences of his evil deeds but keeps on committing sins because he lacks the decisive power, he is constantly persuaded by his wife to murder those who are a threat to his kingship. It leads him to a tragic downfall.

More From William Shakespeare

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Macbeth - Entire Play

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Macbeth , set primarily in Scotland, mixes witchcraft, prophecy, and murder. Three “Weïrd Sisters” appear to Macbeth and his comrade Banquo after a battle and prophesy that Macbeth will be king and that the descendants of Banquo will also reign. When Macbeth arrives at his castle, he and Lady Macbeth plot to assassinate King Duncan, soon to be their guest, so that Macbeth can become king.

After Macbeth murders Duncan, the king’s two sons flee, and Macbeth is crowned. Fearing that Banquo’s descendants will, according to the Weïrd Sisters’ predictions, take over the kingdom, Macbeth has Banquo killed. At a royal banquet that evening, Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost appear covered in blood. Macbeth determines to consult the Weïrd Sisters again. They comfort him with ambiguous promises.

Another nobleman, Macduff, rides to England to join Duncan’s older son, Malcolm. Macbeth has Macduff’s wife and children murdered. Malcolm and Macduff lead an army against Macbeth, as Lady Macbeth goes mad and commits suicide.

Macbeth confronts Malcolm’s army, trusting in the Weïrd Sisters’ comforting promises. He learns that the promises are tricks, but continues to fight. Macduff kills Macbeth and Malcolm becomes Scotland’s king.

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Probably because of being heavily cut, Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's shortest plays, and even so the Hecate scenes may have been re-extended possibly by Middleton, since the interpolated songs at 3.5.13 and 4.1.43 are his. The play is almost uniformly gloomy and without humor: even the sardonic Porter scene may add to its horror more than providing comic relief as De Quincey argues. The evocation of evil is as strong as in any play, including its analogues in Henry VI and Richard III . The role of Lady Macbeth is held to be one of Shakespeare's most vivid evocations of a powerful but misguided woman who pays for her misjudgment of her own resilience: many famous actresses (including Mrs. David P. Bowers ,  Adelaide Ristori , Ellen Terry , Mrs. Patrick Campbell , Lily Langtree , Judith Anderson , and Janet Suzman ) have excelled in the part. Ironically, the historical originals of the Macbeths were among Scotland's better rulers but the affiliation of Scottish King James I with Banquo invited Shakespeare to demonize his rival (as depicted on this Edwardian postcard ). All too often the play is staged in semidarkness (compare RSC 1983 and National Theatre 1993 ) and the Scottish setting and accents can be a challenge. However, its brevity and sinister effects have made the play popular. (For sinister effects, compare Orson Welles's 1935-6 Negro Theater of NYC production , Margaret Webster's 1942 production and Cal Shakes's 2002 production .)

Axline, Kimberly L. "A 'New Deal' and a New Direction: Welles' and Houseman's Depression-Era Productions of Macbeth , Doctor Faustus , and Julius Caesar ." Theatre Studies 45 (2001): 16-49.

Bartholomeusz, Dennis. "The D'Avenant-Betterton Macbeth ." Komos 1 (1967): 41-48.

Bartholemeusz, Dennis. Macbeth and the Players . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Blansfield, Karen C. "Artistic and Social Dimensions of Black Cultures in the 'Voodoo' Macbeth ." Journal of American Drama and Theatre 4, no. 1 (1992): 78-100.

Brooke, Nicholas, ed. The Tragedy of Macbeth . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.

Carlisle, Carol J. "Helen Faucit's Lady Macbeth." Shakespeare Studies 16 (1983): 205-33.

De Quincey, Thomas. "On the Knocking on the Gate in Macbeth ." In Shakespeare Criticism , edited by D. Nichol Smith, 331-6. London: Oxford University Press, 1949.

Donohue, Joseph W., Jr. "Kemble and Mrs. Siddons in Macbeth: The Romantic Approach to Tragic Character." Theatre Notebook 22 (1968): 65-86.

Donohue, Joseph W., Jr. "Kemble's Production of Macbeth: Some Notes on Scene Painters, Scenery, Special Effects, and Costumes." Theatre Notebook 21 (1967): 63-74.

Evans, Gareth Lloyd. " Macbeth: 1946-80 at Stratford-upon-Avon." In Focus on Macbeth , edited by John Russell Brown, 87-110. London and Boston: Routledge, 1982.

Fridén, Ann. "'He Shall Live a Man Forbid': Ingmar Bergman's Macbeth ." Shakespeare Survey 36 (1983): 65-72.

Fridén, Ann. "Macbeth" in the Swedish Theatre 1838-1986 . Malmö: Liber Förlag, 1986.

Gianakaris, C. J. "Stoppard's Adaptations of Shakespeare: Dogg's Hamlet , Cahoot's Macbeth ." Comparative Drama 18 (1984-85): 222-40.

Granville Barker, Harley. Granville Barker's Prefaces to Shakespeare: "Macbeth" . London: Hern, 1993; Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995.

Green, William. "Reinterpreting Macbeth Through the Director's Employment of Non-Verbal Devices." Maske und Kothurn 29 (1983): 160-67.

Harper, Wendy Rogers. "Polanski vs. Welles on Macbeth: Character or Fate?" Literature/Film Quarterly 14, no. 4 (1986): 203-10.

Holderness, Graham. "'To be observed': Cue One Macbeth." In Re-Visions of Shakespeare: Essays in Honor of Robert Ornstein , edited by Evelyn Gajowski, 165-86. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004.

Kliman, Bernice W. Macbeth. Shakespeare in Performance. Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 1992.

Lopez Roman, Blanca. "Sir William D'Avenant's So-Called Improvements of Macbeth (1674)." Actas del I congreso nacional (1990): 211-22.

Male, David. Macbeth . Shakespeare On Stage. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Mullin, Michael. "Stage and Screen: The Trevor Nunn Macbeth ." Shakespeare Quarterly 38 (1987): 350-59.

Nightingale, Benedict. " Macbeth: Shakespeare's Globe." The Times , London, Saturday May 1, 2010.

O'Connor, John S. "But Was It 'Shakespeare'?: Welles' Macbeth and Julius Caesar ." Theatre Journal 32 (1980): 337-48.

Orgel, Stephen. " Macbeth and the Antic Round." Shakespeare Survey 52 (1999): 143-53.

Pearlman, E. " Macbeth on Film: Politics." In Shakespeare and the Moving Image: The Plays on Film and Television , edited by Antony Davies and Stanley Wells, 250-60. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Pearson, Roberta E., and William Uricchio. "'Shrieking from below the gratings': Sir Herbert Beerbohm-Tree's Macbeth and His Critics." In Reclamations of Shakespeare , edited by A. J. Hoenselaars, 249-71. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1994.

Peat, Derek, and Tim Fitzpatrick. " Macbeth in Performance." Sydney Studies in English 8 (1982-83): 89-99.

Rosenberg, Marvin. The Masks of Macbeth . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.

Scouten, Arthur H. "The Premiere of Davenant's Adaptation of Macbeth ." In Shakespeare and Dramatic Tradition: Essays in Honor of S. F. Johnson , edited by W. R. Elton and William B. Long, 286-93. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1989.

Macbeth at Talkin' Broadway .

Trewin , J. C. " Macbeth in the Nineteeth Century." Theatre Quarterly 1, no. 3 (1971): 26-31.

University of Dayton Review 14, no. 1 (1979-80). [Special issue about Macbeth on film.]

Welles, Orson, and Roger Hill, eds. Macbeth: The Mercury Shakespeare with Illustrations by Orson Welles . New York & London: Harper & Brothers, 1941.

Wheeler, Thomas. Macbeth: An Annotated Bibliography . New York and London: Garland, 1990.

Wilders, John, ed. Macbeth . Shakespeare in Production. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Williams, Gordon, ed. Macbeth . Text and Performance. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1985.

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Macbeth Essays

There are loads of ways you can approach writing an essay, but the two i favour are detailed below., the key thing to remember is that an essay should focus on the three aos:, ao1: plot and character development; ao2: language and technique; ao3: context, strategy 1 : extract / rest of play, the first strategy basically splits the essay into 3 paragraphs., the first paragraph focuses on the extract, the second focuses on the rest of the play, the third focuses on context. essentially, it's one ao per paragraph, for a really neatly organised essay., strategy 2 : a structured essay with an argument, this strategy allows you to get a much higher marks as it's structured to form an argument about the whole text. although you might think that's harder - and it's probably going to score more highly - i'd argue that it's actually easier to master. mainly because you do most of the work before the day of the exam., to see some examples of these, click on the links below:, lady macbeth as a powerful woman, macbeth as a heroic character, the key to this style is remembering this: you're going to get a question about a theme, and the extract will definitely relate to the theme., the strategy here is planning out your essays before the exam, knowing that the extract will fit into them somehow., below are some structured essays i've put together., macbeth and gender.

Macbeth – A* / L9 Full Mark Example Essay

This is an A* / L9 full mark example essay on Macbeth completed by a 15-year-old student in timed conditions (50 mins writing, 10 mins planning).

It contained a few minor spelling and grammatical errors – but the quality of analysis overall was very high so this didn’t affect the grade. It is extremely good on form and structure, and perhaps could do with more language analysis of poetic and grammatical devices; as the quality of thought and interpretation is so high this again did not impede the overall mark. 

Thanks for reading! If you find this resource useful, you can take a look at our full online Macbeth course here . Use the code “SHAKESPEARE” to receive a 50% discount!

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MACBETH EXAMPLE ESSAY:

Macbeth’s ambition for status and power grows throughout the play. Shakespeare uses Macbeth as an embodiment of greed and asks the audience to question their own actions through the use of his wrongful deeds.

In the extract, Macbeth is demonstrated to possess some ambition but with overriding morals, when writing to his wife about the prophecies, Lady Macbeth uses metaphors to describe his kind hearted nature: “yet I do fear thy nature, / It is too full o’th’milk of human kindness”. Here, Shakespeare presents Macbeth as a more gentle natured being who is loyal to his king and country. However, the very act of writing the letter demonstrates his inklings of desire, and ambition to take the throne. Perhaps, Shakespeare is aiming to ask the audience about their own thoughts, and whether they would be willing to commit heinous deeds for power and control. 

Furthermore, the extract presents Macbeth’s indecisive tone when thinking of the murder – he doesn’t want to kill Duncan but knows it’s the only way to the throne. Lady Macbeth says she might need to interfere in order to persuade him; his ambition isn’t strong enough yet: “That I may pour my spirits in  thine ear / And chastise with the valour of my tongue”. Here, Shakespeare portrays Lady Macbeth as a manipulative character, conveying she will seduce him in order to “sway “ his mind into killing Duncan. The very need for her persuasion insinuates Macbeth is still weighing up the consequences in his head, his ambition equal with his morality. It would be shocking for the audience to see a female character act in this authoritative way. Lady Macbeth not only holds control of her husband in a patriarchal society but the stage too, speaking in iambic pentameter to portray her status: “To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great”. It is interesting that Shakespeare uses Lady Macbeth in this way; she has more ambition for power than her husband at this part of play. 

As the play progresses, in Act 3, Macbeth’s ambition has grown and now kills with ease. He sends three murders to kill Banquo and his son, Fleance, as the witches predicted that he may have heirs to the throne which could end his reign. Macbeth is suspicious in this act, hiding his true intentions from his dearest companion and his wife: “I wish your horses swift and sure on foot” and “and make our faces vizards to our hearts”. There, we see, as an audience, Macbeth’s longing to remain King much stronger than his initial attitudes towards the throne He was toying with the idea of killing for the throne and now he is killing those that could interfere with his rule without a second thought. It is interesting that Shakespeare presents him this way, as though he is ignoring his morals or that they have been “numbed” by his ambition. Similarly to his wife in the first act, Macbeth also speaks in pentameter to illustrate his increase in power and dominance. 

In Act 4, his ambition and dependence on power has grown even more. When speaking with the witches about the three apparitions, he uses imperatives to portray his newly adopted controlling nature: “I conjure you” and “answer me”. Here, the use of his aggressive demanding demonstrates his reliance on the throne and his need for security. By the Witches showing him the apparitions and predicting his future, he gains a sense of superiority, believing he is safe and protected from everything. Shakespeare also lengthens Macbeth’s speech in front of the Witches in comparison to Act 1 to show his power and ambition has given him confidence, confidence to speak up to the “filthy nags” and expresses his desires. Although it would be easy to infer Macbeth’s greed and ambition has grown from his power-hungry nature, a more compassionate reading of Macbeth demonstrates the pressure he feels as a Jacobean man and soldier. Perhaps he feels he has to constantly strive for more to impress those around him or instead he may want to be king to feel more worthy and possibly less insecure. 

It would be unusual to see a Jacobean citizen approaching an “embodiment” of the supernatural as forming alliance with them was forbidden and frowned upon. Perhaps Shakespeare uses Macbeth to defy these stereotypical views to show that there is a supernatural, a more dark side in us all and it is up to our own decisions whereas we act on these impulses to do what is morally incorrect. 

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Guest Essay

Tired of Sucking It Up as a Climber, I’ve Embraced a Softer Strength

By Beth Rodden

Ms. Rodden is a professional climber and the author of the forthcoming memoir, “A Light Through the Cracks.”

I don’t know what time it was when my husband at the time, the rock climber Tommy Caldwell, finally scrambled over the summit. The sun had risen sometime during the first part of the climb and had set again hours later. I squinted up at him, tired eyes burning as I watched his shadow moving in the beam of my headlight. He had just completed the second free ascent of the Direct Route on the northwest face of Half Dome, a 2,000-foot climb in Yosemite National Park.

We were elite professional climbers, and this was what we did best. Sometimes we made history together; other times I supported him in his feats, belaying and carrying all the gear. Either way, the days were long and hard.

The climber Todd Skinner spent 61 days in 1993 working to establish the Direct Route, then considered the most difficult big wall climb in the world, before reaching the top. On our climb in 2007, our 2 a.m. wake-up, more than 24 hours earlier, hadn’t even felt all that early to me. Sleeping in past midnight? That meant what I was getting up for wasn’t that rad, that hard core. Tommy made it to the top in a day, adding a move that made the climb more difficult than the one Mr. Skinner had pioneered. It felt routine.

Hanging in the middle of Half Dome was an ordinary thing. Ascending ropes with bloody knuckles and a heavy pack thousands of feet off the ground was as conventional to me as grabbing the bananas and apples in the produce section: just part of my day. Climbers pride themselves on being better than normal people. Not just in the “I climbed a mountain and you didn’t” type of way, but in the fabric of how we approach life. How we eat, where we sleep, the stories we walk away with: It’s all better.

By the time I was in my mid-20s, I was a walking archetype of how to succeed in that world because of the belief system I followed: suck it up, persevere, win. I was used to pushing the level of climbing further, used to doing things that no other women had done — and even, a couple of times, things that no guys had done.

I specialized in free climbing, a particular (and particularly challenging) discipline that requires a climber to rely on her gear only for protection from a fall, not for any assistance in moving up the rock. I had free-climbed Yosemite’s El Capitan three times, by three independent routes. Elsewhere in Yosemite, I had established a new route in 2008, Meltdown , that was widely viewed then as the hardest traditional climb in the world, not repeated until 2018. (“Traditional” meaning I depended on a rope suspended by gear I placed myself, rather than on bolts permanently installed in the rock.) For a decade, I had appeared in climbing films and on the pages of climbing magazines. Pushing through the pain, sacrificing my body, shoving my fear away: It’s all what made me better than the rest. I liked being better than the rest.

As we stumbled to the car after that daylong effort on the Direct Route, my arms and legs felt tired, my mouth parched. I was good at this. I didn’t need to eat much food, drink much water. I was a low-maintenance girl. I always got patted on the back for not taking up too much space and being able to suffer with the best of them. There were times when I was climbing that I wept with fear, with fatigue, with regret. But when I did, I tried to hide it. I’d had that instinct from my earliest climbing days, even before I survived a days-long kidnapping during an expedition to Kyrgyzstan. After I made it home (Tommy had pushed one of the armed kidnappers off a cliff — a fall we later learned he had survived — enabling our group of four climbers to escape), I had more than doubled down. Scorning and hiding my feelings, shoving them down, felt admirable to me then. I’d been told it was strength. It felt like strength.

There wasn’t much room for women or feelings at the top of the sport back then. A handful of us were landing on the covers of magazines or vying to be the token featured woman at a climbing film festival, but I learned early on that as good as I was at actually climbing, I needed to be able to suffer to stand out. Climbing through a broken foot? Amazing, here’s a raise. Did you hear how many hours they went without food and water for the summit? Make a feature movie about them. As much as logistics and physical prowess, subscribing to the bravado was part of the job description in climbing. And for years, I was all in.

I can’t say there was one moment, a specific event that made me start to question the “suck it up, Rodden” theme song I had lived by for so long. I got divorced, and eventually remarried; I got injured over and over. After years of injuries I had a child, and that led to relearning my body. Maybe it was the scale of all those changes in my life that forced me to reconsider the way I’d always done things, or maybe I just got fed up with the facade. Why was it noble to climb through cracks on El Cap soaked with climbers’ urine, but leaking while jogging postpartum was something to be ashamed of?

Gradually, I began to question the old mentality. I began to be more open about what I found value in, and learned to share my pain and my fears with friends instead of hiding them behind a perma-smile. I started to be kinder to myself, and to be frank that, as effective as it had been for me and my career, I just didn’t see the point in suffering for the sake of a climb anymore. In letting go of that, I was surprised to find a new kind of strength — something perhaps truer and more durable than the ability to just plow through.

I am still a professional climber, though I haven’t been at the peak of the sport in a very long time. I still have goals, and I still love the feeling of trying hard and succeeding, but I love easy days at the crag with a group of girlfriends just as much. My sponsors have found value in partnering with me beyond the number grade assigned to a climb that I’ve done. Instead, we’ve realized together that none of these topics that have plagued the community for so long will go away if left in silence. Making the sport more inclusive, speaking about the ways that climbing can and should evolve as it grows in popularity, is my current project.

This past winter found me injured and on the sidelines yet again. But this time, instead of hobbling around with a crutch and a cast on my leg or having a finger splinted up, I was carrying a foam pad wherever I went, so that I could easily get into a horizontal position. Ten years after I’d given birth, my postpartum bladder prolapse symptoms had returned. Naturally, people would ask why I wasn’t climbing. Years earlier, I would have been mortified. But now I answered bluntly: “I blew out my pelvic floor .” To my surprise, most everyone would sit down, ask what that meant, how it happened, what the symptoms were, what recovery would look like.

I’m not the only one who’s changed. Climbing has come so far in the 30 years since I started in the sport. Today, instead of getting dropped by their sponsors, women can continue their careers with vigor after having children. Mental health awareness and therapy are widely accepted (which is imperative in a community that experiences so much death and trauma), and now, perhaps even conversations about vulnerabilities like perimenopause and prolapse don’t have to be hidden. I like to think we’re starting to embrace a softer kind of strength. Maybe taking care of ourselves, whatever that looks like, can now be as celebrated as dodging death for a summit.

Beth Rodden is a professional climber and the author of the forthcoming memoir, “A Light Through the Cracks.”

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Should college essays touch on race? Some feel the affirmative action ruling leaves them no choice

CHICAGO — When she started writing her college essay, Hillary Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. About being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana and growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. About hardship and struggle.

Then she deleted it all.

“I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18-year-old senior at Lincoln Park High School in Chicago. “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.”

When the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in higher education, it left the college essay as one of few places where race can play a role in admissions decisions. For many students of color, instantly more was riding on the already high-stakes writing assignment. Some say they felt pressure to exploit their hardships as they competed for a spot on campus.

Amofa was just starting to think about her essay when the court issued its decision, and it left her with a wave of questions. Could she still write about her race? Could she be penalized for it? She wanted to tell colleges about her heritage but she didn’t want to be defined by it.

In English class, Amofa and her classmates read sample essays that all seemed to focus on some trauma or hardship. It left her with the impression she had to write about her life’s hardest moments to show how far she’d come. But she and some classmates wondered if their lives had been hard enough to catch the attention of admissions offices.

This year’s senior class is the first in decades to navigate college admissions without affirmative action . The Supreme Court upheld the practice in decisions going back to the 1970s, but this court’s conservative supermajority found it is unconstitutional for colleges to give students extra weight because of their race alone.

Still, the decision left room for race to play an indirect role: Chief Justice John Roberts wrote universities can still consider how an applicant’s life was shaped by their race, “so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability.”

Scores of colleges responded with new essay prompts asking about students’ backgrounds.

When Darrian Merritt started writing his essay, his first instinct was to write about events that led to him going to live with his grandmother as a child. Those were painful memories, but he thought they might play well at schools like Yale, Stanford and Vanderbilt.

“I feel like the admissions committee might expect a sob story or a tragic story,” said Merritt, a senior in Cleveland. “I wrestled with that a lot.”

Eventually he abandoned the idea and aimed for an essay that would stand out for its positivity.

Merritt wrote about a summer camp where he started to feel more comfortable in his own skin. He described embracing his personality and defying his tendency to please others. But the essay also reflects on his feelings of not being “Black enough” and getting made fun of for listening to “white people music.”

Like many students, Max Decker of Portland, Oregon, had drafted a college essay on one topic, only to change direction after the Supreme Court ruling in June.

Decker initially wrote about his love for video games. In a childhood surrounded by constant change, navigating his parents’ divorce, the games he took from place to place on his Nintendo DS were a source of comfort.

But the essay he submitted to colleges focused on the community he found through Word is Bond, a leadership group for young Black men in Portland.

As the only biracial, Jewish kid with divorced parents in a predominantly white, Christian community, Decker wrote he felt like the odd one out. On a trip with Word is Bond to Capitol Hill, he and friends who looked just like him shook hands with lawmakers. The experience, he wrote, changed how he saw himself.

“It’s because I’m different that I provide something precious to the world, not the other way around,” wrote Decker, whose top college choice is Tulane, in New Orleans, because of the region’s diversity.

Amofa used to think affirmative action was only a factor at schools like Harvard and Yale. After the court’s ruling, she was surprised to find that race was taken into account even at public universities she was applying to.

Now, without affirmative action, she wondered if mostly white schools will become even whiter.

It’s been on her mind as she chooses between Indiana University and the University of Dayton, both of which have relatively few Black students. When she was one of the only Black students in her grade school, she could fall back on her family and Ghanaian friends at church. At college, she worries about loneliness.

“That’s what I’m nervous about,” she said. “Going and just feeling so isolated, even though I’m constantly around people.”

The first drafts of her essay didn’t tell colleges about who she is now, she said.

Her final essay describes how she came to embrace her natural hair. She wrote about going to a mostly white grade school where classmates made jokes about her afro.

Over time, she ignored their insults and found beauty in the styles worn by women in her life. She now runs a business doing braids and other hairstyles in her neighborhood.

“Criticism will persist,” she wrote “but it loses its power when you know there’s a crown on your head!”

Ma reported from Portland, Oregon.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

Essay: I Play Soccer but I Don’t Know the Rules, and Maybe That’s Alright

Horoscope editor Catherine Myer talks about her triumphs and pitfalls playing soccer in Rome.

At Loyola’s John Felice Rome Center, soccer is a big deal. Since we’re an Italian campus, the sport is referred to by its Italian name — calcio.

Every Wednesday evening, students make the trek down to the neighborhood soccer fields to either compete or cheer. Only three fields are available, so games are split into two time slots — 8-9 p.m. and 9-10 p.m. Students competing in 8 p.m. games are allowed to purchase drinks from the on-site bar, Don Orione, after their match is over.

Once all games have come to a close, many of the students make their way to Levels — a neighborhood bar kind enough to host the mass of rowdy American kids. Sweaty students cram together in front of the bar, euros crumpled in their fists, while victorious captains buy celebratory shots for their winning teams.

I’ve put myself on a soccer team without knowing the rules. It doesn’t help that since it’s intramural soccer and played on a smaller field, the rules are specialized. But what I lack in knowledge, I make up for in enthusiasm. 

I signed up for calcio with the “Why not?” mentality. All my friends were signing up, so I wrote down my name, checked the “no experience” box, and that was that. I didn’t think my sixth grade soccer run really counted for much.

Come time for the first game, I was terrified. On the list of updated rules sent out by our assistant resident director was “NO SLIDE TACKLES,” bolded and in all caps.

I didn’t know slide tackling was an option in soccer. 

“This is it,” I thought to myself. “I’m going to die.”

On the first calcio night of the semester, a girl on a different team had her tooth knocked out and my team, the Silver Sharks, lost our game by one point. 

I was suddenly a sixth-grader again — a twig of a girl, hesitant and anxious on the soccer pitch. 

My borrowed shorts were pulled up high over top of my thermal leggings, and a long-sleeve shirt was similarly padded under my jersey. Regardless of my meticulous layering, my knobby knees knocked together as I trembled from the cold. My glasses slipped down my nose.

Yep, I definitely looked like an athlete. 

When the ball hurtled toward me, I wound up my kick, swung and missed. 

Sometimes I’ll make contact, though. It’s those days that I text my parents afterward, highly exaggerating my invaluable assistance to the team. Most of the time, though, I’m a scrub on the bench.

It stings at times. Usually you sign up for sports with the expectation you’ll get to play. But I’ve taken these times to really sharpen my skills in fanatical screaming. 

Coined by my teammate Margot, my favorite cheer to holler is “Eat ‘em up, Sharks!” 

I shout strategy and advice — which is likely less helpful than I mean it to be considering the rules of soccer still evade me.

I’ll defend my team till my dying breath. The innocence of the Silver Sharks is a hill I’ll gladly die on. I’ve formed one-sided rivalries with players from other teams who dare attack my team. I’ll glare at them on campus — even though I don’t think they even know my name.

“What handball?” I like to protest to the referee. “That was clearly a defensive block.” 

I’m not even sure if “defensive block” is the correct term, but it sure sounds legitimate when I say it. 

I’ve found I really enjoy being a part of a team. There’s a certain glue that holds teammates together — unbreakable, almost. You’re tightly bound to each other immediately in the spirit of competition and camaraderie. 

“Ready for the big game tonight?” I ask my teammates. “Excited to see you on the field tonight.” I feel like a real athlete when I say it, too — which is a nice bonus. 

Even when I kick the ball out of bounds, my team cheers for me.

“Way to not let them have it, Cate,” they call. It’s like I’m invincible in these moments. 

So maybe it doesn’t matter that I don’t quite know the rules of soccer. And maybe it doesn’t matter that I’m a benched scrub more often than not. Because it’s still fun and I’m still a part of the best calcio team this side of the Tiber. 

The Silver Sharks lost to the Pink Panthers in the first round of the quarterfinals, but interested Rome student spectators can still catch us eating up the competition in the friendly — losers’ — bracket on Wednesday evenings.

Feature image courtesy of Catherine Meyer

Catherine Meyer

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Should college essays touch on race? Some feel the affirmative action ruling leaves them no choice

Hillary Amofa listens to others member of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

When the Supreme Court ended affirmative action, it left the college essay as one of few places where race can play a role in admissions decisions. (AP Video: Noreen Nasir)

Hillary Amofa listens to others member of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

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Hillary Amofa, laughs as she participates in a team building game with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Hillary Amofa stands for a portrait after practice with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Max Decker, a senior at Lincoln High School, sits for a portrait in the school library where he often worked on writing his college essays, in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

Hillary Amofa stands for a portrait after practice with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Hillary Amofa, second from left, practices with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Max Decker, a senior at Lincoln High School, stands for a portrait outside of the school in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

*Hillary Amofa, reflected right, practices in a mirror with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Max Decker, a senior at Lincoln High School, sits for a portrait outside of the school in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

Hillary Amofa, left, practices with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Hillary Amofa sits for a portrait after her step team practice at Lincoln Park High School Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

FILE - Demonstrators protest outside of the Supreme Court in Washington, in this June 29, 2023 file photo, after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, saying race cannot be a factor. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

CHICAGO (AP) — When she started writing her college essay, Hillary Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. About being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana and growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. About hardship and struggle.

Then she deleted it all.

“I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18-year-old senior at Lincoln Park High School in Chicago. “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.”

When the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in higher education, it left the college essay as one of few places where race can play a role in admissions decisions. For many students of color, instantly more was riding on the already high-stakes writing assignment. Some say they felt pressure to exploit their hardships as they competed for a spot on campus.

Amofa was just starting to think about her essay when the court issued its decision, and it left her with a wave of questions. Could she still write about her race? Could she be penalized for it? She wanted to tell colleges about her heritage but she didn’t want to be defined by it.

In English class, Amofa and her classmates read sample essays that all seemed to focus on some trauma or hardship. It left her with the impression she had to write about her life’s hardest moments to show how far she’d come. But she and some of her classmates wondered if their lives had been hard enough to catch the attention of admissions offices.

“For a lot of students, there’s a feeling of, like, having to go through something so horrible to feel worthy of going to school, which is kind of sad,” said Amofa, the daughter of a hospital technician and an Uber driver.

This year’s senior class is the first in decades to navigate college admissions without affirmative action . The Supreme Court upheld the practice in decisions going back to the 1970s, but this court’s conservative supermajority found it is unconstitutional for colleges to give students extra weight because of their race alone.

Still, the decision left room for race to play an indirect role: Chief Justice John Roberts wrote universities can still consider how an applicant’s life was shaped by their race, “so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability.”

“A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination,” he wrote.

Scores of colleges responded with new essay prompts asking about students’ backgrounds. Brown University asked applicants how “an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you.” Rice University asked students how their perspectives were shaped by their “background, experiences, upbringing, and/or racial identity.”

Hillary Amofa, reflected right, practices in a mirror with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

WONDERING IF SCHOOLS ‘EXPECT A SOB STORY’

When Darrian Merritt started writing his essay, he knew the stakes were higher than ever because of the court’s decision. His first instinct was to write about events that led to him going to live with his grandmother as a child.

Those were painful memories, but he thought they might play well at schools like Yale, Stanford and Vanderbilt.

“I feel like the admissions committee might expect a sob story or a tragic story,” said Merritt, a senior in Cleveland. “And if you don’t provide that, then maybe they’re not going to feel like you went through enough to deserve having a spot at the university. I wrestled with that a lot.”

He wrote drafts focusing on his childhood, but it never amounted to more than a collection of memories. Eventually he abandoned the idea and aimed for an essay that would stand out for its positivity.

Merritt wrote about a summer camp where he started to feel more comfortable in his own skin. He described embracing his personality and defying his tendency to please others. The essay had humor — it centered on a water gun fight where he had victory in sight but, in a comedic twist, slipped and fell. But the essay also reflects on his feelings of not being “Black enough” and getting made fun of for listening to “white people music.”

“I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to write this for me, and we’re just going to see how it goes,’” he said. “It just felt real, and it felt like an honest story.”

The essay describes a breakthrough as he learned “to take ownership of myself and my future by sharing my true personality with the people I encounter. ... I realized that the first chapter of my own story had just been written.”

Max Decker, a senior at Lincoln High School, sits for a portrait in the school library where he often worked on writing his college essays, in Portland, Ore., March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

A RULING PROMPTS PIVOTS ON ESSAY TOPICS

Like many students, Max Decker of Portland, Oregon, had drafted a college essay on one topic, only to change direction after the Supreme Court ruling in June.

Decker initially wrote about his love for video games. In a childhood surrounded by constant change, navigating his parents’ divorce, the games he took from place to place on his Nintendo DS were a source of comfort.

But the essay he submitted to colleges focused on the community he found through Word is Bond, a leadership group for young Black men in Portland.

As the only biracial, Jewish kid with divorced parents in a predominantly white, Christian community, Decker wrote he constantly felt like the odd one out. On a trip with Word is Bond to Capitol Hill, he and friends who looked just like him shook hands with lawmakers. The experience, he wrote, changed how he saw himself.

“It’s because I’m different that I provide something precious to the world, not the other way around,” he wrote.

As a first-generation college student, Decker thought about the subtle ways his peers seemed to know more about navigating the admissions process . They made sure to get into advanced classes at the start of high school, and they knew how to secure glowing letters of recommendation.

Max Decker reads his college essay on his experience with a leadership group for young Black men. (AP Video/Noreen Nasir)

If writing about race would give him a slight edge and show admissions officers a fuller picture of his achievements, he wanted to take that small advantage.

His first memory about race, Decker said, was when he went to get a haircut in elementary school and the barber made rude comments about his curly hair. Until recently, the insecurity that moment created led him to keep his hair buzzed short.

Through Word is Bond, Decker said he found a space to explore his identity as a Black man. It was one of the first times he was surrounded by Black peers and saw Black role models. It filled him with a sense of pride in his identity. No more buzzcut.

The pressure to write about race involved a tradeoff with other important things in his life, Decker said. That included his passion for journalism, like the piece he wrote on efforts to revive a once-thriving Black neighborhood in Portland. In the end, he squeezed in 100 characters about his journalism under the application’s activities section.

“My final essay, it felt true to myself. But the difference between that and my other essay was the fact that it wasn’t the truth that I necessarily wanted to share,” said Decker, whose top college choice is Tulane, in New Orleans, because of the region’s diversity. “It felt like I just had to limit the truth I was sharing to what I feel like the world is expecting of me.”

Demonstrators protest outside of the Supreme Court in Washington, in this June 29, 2023 file photo, after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, saying race cannot be a factor. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

SPELLING OUT THE IMPACT OF RACE

Before the Supreme Court ruling, it seemed a given to Imani Laird that colleges would consider the ways that race had touched her life. But now, she felt like she had to spell it out.

As she started her essay, she reflected on how she had faced bias or felt overlooked as a Black student in predominantly white spaces.

There was the year in math class when the teacher kept calling her by the name of another Black student. There were the comments that she’d have an easier time getting into college because she was Black .

“I didn’t have it easier because of my race,” said Laird, a senior at Newton South High School in the Boston suburbs who was accepted at Wellesley and Howard University, and is waiting to hear from several Ivy League colleges. “I had stuff I had to overcome.”

In her final essays, she wrote about her grandfather, who served in the military but was denied access to GI Bill benefits because of his race.

She described how discrimination fueled her ambition to excel and pursue a career in public policy.

“So, I never settled for mediocrity,” she wrote. “Regardless of the subject, my goal in class was not just to participate but to excel. Beyond academics, I wanted to excel while remembering what started this motivation in the first place.”

Hillary Amofa stands for a portrait after practice with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

WILL SCHOOLS LOSE RACIAL DIVERSITY?

Amofa used to think affirmative action was only a factor at schools like Harvard and Yale. After the court’s ruling, she was surprised to find that race was taken into account even at some public universities she was applying to.

Now, without affirmative action, she wondered if mostly white schools will become even whiter.

It’s been on her mind as she chooses between Indiana University and the University of Dayton, both of which have relatively few Black students. When she was one of the only Black students in her grade school, she could fall back on her family and Ghanaian friends at church. At college, she worries about loneliness.

“That’s what I’m nervous about,” she said. “Going and just feeling so isolated, even though I’m constantly around people.”

Hillary Amofa reads her college essay on embracing her natural hair. (AP Video/Noreen Nasir)

The first drafts of her essay focused on growing up in a low-income family, sharing a bedroom with her brother and grandmother. But it didn’t tell colleges about who she is now, she said.

Her final essay tells how she came to embrace her natural hair . She wrote about going to a mostly white grade school where classmates made jokes about her afro. When her grandmother sent her back with braids or cornrows, they made fun of those too.

Over time, she ignored their insults and found beauty in the styles worn by women in her life. She now runs a business doing braids and other hairstyles in her neighborhood.

“I stopped seeing myself through the lens of the European traditional beauty standards and started seeing myself through the lens that I created,” Amofa wrote.

“Criticism will persist, but it loses its power when you know there’s a crown on your head!”

Ma reported from Portland, Oregon.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

The Associated Press

Without affirmative action, students of color feel the added weight of their college essays

Posted: March 27, 2024 | Last updated: March 27, 2024

When the Supreme Court ended affirmative action, it left the college essay as one of few places where race can play a role in admissions decisions. (AP Video: Noreen Nasir)

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