Greed gives motivation to reach a certain goal. Sometimes, it works and does help you to achieve what you want, but there will be punishments, or you will have to pay the price. In MacBeth by William Shakespeare, there are two characters named Macbeth and Lady Macbeth who are lovers and partners in crime. They are both greedy to become king and queen of Scotland, so they take matters into their own hands and do very inhumane things. Although it seemed as if they were fine and achieved the goal, they would pay a price. William Shakespeare’s story “MacBeth” shows how greed for power always has a price to pay, and in the end might not be worth it.
First of all, Lady Macbeth and MacBeth were greedy to become king and queen, so they decided to kill King Duncan. They did this because Duncan’s son, Malcolm, was going to be his successor, so they framed him. Greed and killing can turn your brain and think ill, though. MacBeth was talking big to his wife about his plan that he is going to kill Duncan, but when it came to the actual event, he could barely do the job. “Why did you bring the daggers with you? They must be left up there. Take them back, and smear the sleepy servants with blood.Coward! Give me the daggers! Sleeping and dead people are like pictures of themselves.”MacBeth suddenly wasn’t such a big man anymore. He could barely do the job. "What's happened to me, that every noise scares me? More likely my hands will stain the vast green seas blood-red." It was also as if he was becoming delirious. MacBeth killed Duncan and becomes king, but it’s as if all this trauma and paranoia is worse. Not to mention the thought of someone having an idea that he did the killing of the King. That would lead him to his doom.
Lady Macbeth didn’t do any killing, but she plays a big role in it. "If Duncan hadn't looked like my father in his sleep, I'd have done it myself." She was crazy herself, it was as if she wanted Duncan dead more than Macbeth did. In the beginning, it seemed that nothing affected her. She was the one who had drunken Duncan’s guards and put them to sleep. She also put the daggers by Duncan’s bed for Macbeth to do the killing. To top it off, she was the one to grab the daggers and frame Duncan’s sons because Macbeth was already delirious. From this point, there were some small thoughts that she would pay the same price that Macbeth did and become ill-minded. Towards the end of the book, she too became traumatized. “To bed, to bed. There’s someone knocking at the gate.” The doctor and lady-in-waiting experienced Lady Macbeth commit suicide. In the end, all her efforts to become queen was put to waste because she ended up dying, too. Her price for being greedy was worth too much.
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth both paid the price for being greedy, which was worse than their actual achievement. After Duncan’s killing both of their brains didn’t function right anymore. Macbeth was becoming suspicious about everything. He sent out murderers to kill Banquo because the witches said he would be the father of a line of kings. After Banquo’s death, Macbeth started seeing things. While he was with his acquaintances, he was hallucinating and could see Banquo’s ghost. Because of this, he was becoming crazy. He was also paranoid that MacDuff knew that he had killed Duncan. So, he sent out murderers to kill him, too, but he had left to go get Malcolm. MacBeth was so nervous about getting killed that he was oblivious to everything that was happening around him. “The queen, my lord, is dead.” After hearing the news about Lady Macbeth’s death, he didn’t even worry. He was just worried about himself. “MacDuff enter, with Macbeth’s head on a pole.” In the end, Macbeth dies, and Malcolm becomes King. Which is very ironic because Macbeth killed Duncan to become king. So, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth end up dying and in my opinion, wasn’t worth their whole scheme. MacBeth and Lady MacBeth were just too caught up in the greed for power. People want power because they are selfish and want everything to themselves, which is also greedy. But also because they are not so sure about themselves. A person would want to be the top dog so that they make sure that everyone knows that they are important or powerful. This says that this person is insecure about themselves if they try to remind people about themselves.
“MacBeth” by William Shakespeare is an example of how being greedy for power has a price, and sometimes the price is worth more than the actual goal you are trying to achieve. Lady Macbeth wanted to become queen of Scotland by killing the King Duncan. But, she ended up becoming traumatized and commiting suicide. Macbeth wanted to become king, but he became crazy and paranoid about everything, so he ended up killing even more people. In the end, he dies, too. Both of them achieved their goal by being greedy and killing people, but in the end, they ended up dying, too. They did become king and queen for a little while, but the price they had to pay were their lives. Which in my opinion, is not worth being king or queen. The moral is don’t be greedy and go overboard to achieve a goal because you will pay for it in the end, it won't bet worth it.
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