The Road to Death
Throughout the history, there are a lot of ambitious persons who get power and higher social status by ignoble ways. In Shakespeare’s plays, there are many roles like this. Here I’d like to make a tentative comparison and contrast about Macbeth and Claudius. For, although there are some differences硬件看门狗 between them, they have a lot in common, which reminds us of self-discipline. From their performance, we can learn to avoid the possible inner factors that may lead us to DEATH.
First, both Macbeth and Claudius got the throne by evil ways and their results are the same. Macbeth killed Duncan in order to get greater power and became the king of Scotland. Lots of people died because of him. And Claudius drugged Hamlet’s father so that he could be the king. Although Claudius is not the main character of the play Hamlet, his fate is much like the one of Macbeth. At the end of the play, he was killed by Hamlet, his nephew who took a revenge for his father. Also Macbeth finally paid for his baseness. He was killed by the son of Duncan. From this aspect, their destinies are almost the same.
Besides, they share one same factor to their tragedies—desire which plays an important role in both of their destinies. Macbeth was not satisfied with his present status, so he got greater one by killing Duncan. And later he murdered Banquo and Macduff’s wife in order to enhance his throne. Because of his desire—ambition, he lost his basic reason and judgement, as well as his conscience中国红歌会
. For Claudius, the desire for power was also the main reason that leads to his pathetic ending. As a human being, how cruel it is to murder his brother. And he also took great effort to deal with his nephew, Hamlet who wanted to revenge for his father. Both Macbeth and Claudius worried about losing the power that they had got. And in order to fulfill their own desire, both of them used mean ways to enhance their status. What’s more, both of them suffered from the pangs of guilt and regret. 吴迪网球For Claudius who killed his brother, he was mentally tortured by what he had done which was “a lash” that 地域研究与开发
“doth give” to his conscience. He compared his own actions as “the harlot’s cheek, beautied with plast’ring art”, which “呢喃的火花is not more ugly to the thing that helps it”. He also realized that it’s a “heavy burthen”! And for Macbeth, it’s pathetic to “have lives long enou中国青年创业
国际计划 gh” and it must be painful that his “way of life is fall’n into the sear”. It’s more than agony, for both Claudius and Macbeth, to bear such kind of agony from their conscience.
It’s not easy to feel comfortable after the mental suffering. There are similarities between Macbeth and Claudius, but differences also exist. They have disparate characteristics, and the reasons for their tragedies are different.
On one hand, Claudius is to some extent more careful than Macbeth. Claudius looks so calm and he seldom shows his inner mind. He does everything step by step and he is so cruel. But he hid his cruelty so well that we can hardly say that he was a thug just from his physical appearance. Although he seemed to care about his nephew, he asked Polonius to investigate Hamlet who may threaten his throne. While Macbeth asked his wife when he was doing some decisions, for example, he finally decided to kill Duncan by the encouragement of his wife who laughed at him for his cowardliness.
On the other hand, some external factors to their result are different. Claudius’ motivation includes the desire not only for power, but also for woman. While compared with Claudius,
Macbeth was encouraged by his ambition, as well as his wife and three witches. The tragedy of Macbeth includes much more external factors than that of Claudius.
Whatever benefits Macbeth and Claudius have got from the power and status, they had to accept the suffering of their conscience more or less. Although the environment that they are in and the personalities that they have are different, both of them have to pay for their desire no matter whether they had realized that or not. It reminds people not only the ancient, but also modern people that we had better make proper use of desire, or it may bring us unexpected adverse affect. Whatever we are going to be in the future, we have to do everything according to our conscience. If we don’t, it’s ourselves who are going to burden the disastrous effect. Never allow our desire to grow as it likes. It’s wise to learn to control the desire, which would make sure that we will never step on the road to death for our own reasons!
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