Explain How Macbeth Comes To The Conclusion To Not Kill Duncan And How Lady Macbeth Changes His Mind The brave and confident Macbeth has a choice to kill, or not to kill Duncan. Macbeth is torn between these two decisions and is unsure what to do. Lady Macbeth persuades him by mocking his manhood. Should Macbeth kill Duncan Macbeth has many reasons for not killing Duncan. The first one is that Duncan has “An absolute trust” in Macbeth and that he is Duncan’s kinsman. The other duties he owes to Duncan are a subject to his king, and of a host to his guest.
Macbeth quite rightly believes that someone should not invite a guest for the night and then kill them. As he says, he is his “host who should against his murderer shut the door, not bear the knife myself.” Macbeth does not want to take the risk of even trying to kill Duncan because he thinks that something might go wrong and ruin his chances of success. Macbeth also reckons that his evil deeds could lead to his own death and everyone would be hunting for the murderer. The only reason for Macbeth to kill Duncan is his own ambition, which eventually leads to the death of the king. Macbeth tells us ” That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o’er-leaps itself And falls on the other.” In this Macbeth is telling us that Duncan represents the wall and he represents the horse.
The horse has to jump the wall to get past it. As the wall represents Duncan on the throne, as soon as the horse (Macbeth) gets over the other side he will become king. This shows us Macbeth’s real ambition to kill Duncan and to finally become king. It is Lady Macbeth’s sole goal to convince her husband to kill Duncan in order to make Macbeth, already Than of Candor and Glam is, king and thus herself queen.
Lady Macbeth becomes very ambitious to convince Macbeth to go ahead with the murder by threatening his manhood. Lady Macbeth tries to say that her husband should not let the chance he has now slip away, as it will be the only and easiest one he will get. The strongest argument is in lines 54-59 act 1 scene 7. She says that she would even kill her beloved baby while it was sucking at her breasts if she had sworn to do so. She assumes that Macbeth, the brave and worthy soldier, swore to kill Duncan (which he never did), the king, she says that it is his duty to kill him. As Lady Macbeth taunts her husband’s honour and manhood, he has to respond in order not to look like a coward.
Macbeth cannot question his wife’s ambitiousness because there isn’t anything worse for a mother to do than kill her baby and likewise there isn’t anything worse than a soldier can do than kill his king. It is, undoubtedly, evident that Lady Macbeth’s argumentation’s as well as her tactical and rhetorical games are successful. By the end of the scene she has completely convinced Macbeth and he is all set to go ahead with the murder although he is nervous. Act 1 Scene 7 tells us that Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are very ambitious people. I think that Lady Macbeth bullies Macbeth because at the start of the scene he did not want to kill the king for several reasons. Lady Macbeth mocked his honour and manhood and somehow got inside Macbeth’s mind and changed it.
Lady Macbeth also seems very evil because she would make up very disgusting situations to make Macbeth change his mind like the killing of the baby in lines 54-59 I think that Macbeth would do anything for Lady Macbeth even though she mocks him. I think he is kind of a wimp because he asks Lady Macbeth if they would fail what would they do and she calms him down and he accepts to kill the king.