The Perils of Ambition: Macbeth and The Crucible

Shakespeare’s Macbeth, written in 1623, and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, written in 1953, are both historical plays based on a character’s extreme behaviors that have stemmed from evil desires and ulterior motives. Miller and Shakespeare set their plays in secluded religious societies that help in the progress of either mass hysteria or individual paranoia. The two authors make the audience second-guess themselves in their disturbing plays by using symbolic concepts that deconstruct the ideology of good and evil. Additionally, with corruption of power, female characters from both stories challenge the men they love to further their own needs. These stories panic, overwhelm, and frustrate their audiences with the twists and turns of their problematic characters and plot. Although ambition is a great motivator for success, it can become an unforgivable force where goals distort to work against you.

Shakespeare and Miller use fragmented, obsessive, and repetitive language structure in their texts when challenging their audience to consider the implications of hysteria. Individual madness is used by Shakespeare in his story as it drives Lady Macbeth into suicide and makes Macbeth delusional and irrational. Contrastingly mass hysteria is explored in The Crucible as the whole town turns on one another in an unconscious superstitious religious vendetta. When Lady Macbeth’s suicide nears, she recites events in an incorrect order of broken rambles, emphasizing her insanity. First, she describes “The Thane of Fife had a wife” in reference to Lady Macduff, and then talks about Banquo, who died before Lady Macduff, “Banquo’s buried”. The lack of presence from other characters intensifies her vulnerable yet fanatical guilt as she tells the truth of her victims’ souls to the audience. She ultimately slits her wrists with the echo of her past assurance plaguing our minds; “What’s done is done”. Arthur Miller explores a similar structure in Act 3 using a group of people rather than one and uses panicked yelling to hide the truth instead of silence, which intensifies the truth. As the truth comes close to being exposed, Abigail and the girls chant in a repetitive and uniform manner, giving the illusion of power. Mary’s constant bumbling and incoherent whispering shows her panic and fear for Abigail’s power, which ultimately drive her to turn against Proctor screaming he’s the “Devil’s man”. With the clever construction of fragmented speech in both texts, the audiences scramble for coherence to form their own sane understanding of events. This causes panic in the reader and makes them jump words and read faster in a frenzy, feeling the same hysteria as the characters. Additionally, the two composed tragic heroes, John Proctor and Macbeth, snap in a similar method when they are finally overpowered. Macbeth explains his repetitive and thus monotonous views of life’s cycle after Lady Macbeth’s death. Proctor, who was stripped of his hopes, uses obsessive language of the Devil to claim that all life, including him, will go to Hell. Whether it be motivated by guilt, fear, or defeat, hysteria has led to the downfall of the protagonists shown through fast-paced dialogue made possible by narrative structure.

The inner and external conflict of what is right and wrong are represented through various motifs using either complex hallucinations in Macbeth or direct reference to God and the Devil in The Crucible. For both texts, there are continuous references to light and dark to represent the ideology of good and evil. Miller shows light through high-reaching windows in bleak and unhopeful moments, while Shakespeare uses it to represent life and protection against evil. Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Miller’s Abigail use the dark of night to shroud their evil doings, whether it be murdering friends, or a witch ritual. In both scenarios, darkness represents an unlawful and unfair trial of events, and light shows the hope for the fight against evil and death but is not always retrievable or probable. The audience feels hopeless and ashamed as egotism envelop the stories from progressing towards a happy ending. From the beginning, Shakespeare makes Macbeth question whether his honor is worth forfeiting for the crown as he struggles between evil and ambition. Countless hallucinations stand in his way that make him question his guilt, including the bloody dagger outside of Duncan’s chamber and Banquo’s ghost at his feast. Although he is King, a Holy representative of God, Macbeth ironically finds it incapable of saying “amen” due to his guilty conscience. Just like Macbeth fights his inner demons, Miller’s Proctor fights his real-life nightmare, his mistress Abigail. The church that is supposed to represent a Godly light of truth becomes distorted as the fine line between religion and law is not established, this is because the setting of the court is ironically in the church. A constant power struggle for what is good and evil is apparent as each person believes their truth to be correct, and others to be wrong. Eventually, Proctor claims he and others will go to hell, and that God is dead. For Macbeth and Proctor, God’s presence becomes difficult to acknowledge when evil temptations plague the minds of either themselves or their competitors. The internal battle of Macbeth is clear as he tries to decide to honor his hallucinations that portray his guilt, or continue with his evil ambition, while Proctor fights against his mistress’ evil quest to slay his wife.

Miller’s Abigail Williams and Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth are both characterized as underhanded women who abuse their power to attain immoral power, and in doing so, shatter the conventional ways of a woman’s behaviou=r. Although the two characters are set in different times, society’s expectations of them remained to be dutiful to men, their home, and their children. For Abigail, the men in power were religious leaders, while for Lady Macbeth it was male military leaders and kings. Despite their expectations, both women were ambitious exploiters causing for confusion in readers as they exceed their expectations and become unpredictable. Abigail manipulated the town into thinking she was Holy and used that power to orchestrate a series of innocent deaths under the claim they were witches. However, Abigail’s true evil goal was to kill John Proctor’s wife and marry him for herself. Lady Macbeth used her position as Macbeth’s wife to taunt and domineer her husband into killing the king and claiming the crown for himself. As the characters continue to gain power and give orders for more deaths, their vindictive ambition blocks the audience from emotionally connecting with them as they have reached a position that is no longer relatable, or justifiable. Despite the rise of corruption of their own hand, both characters’ somehow escape the story’s climax. The once calm, overbearing and gracious Lady Macbeth had been reduced to a gibbering woman with no logical order to her words due to the guilt that ripped at the very fabrications of her sanity. In the end, Lady Macbeth slit her wrists in remorse for her ambitious, yet malicious, actions done under her command. The once bold and unafraid Abigail runs from the Puritan society in the dead of night with the fear of being hung due to her lies against witchcraft. Due to no money, she is forced to become prostitute in a nearby town, forever trapping her in an impure and unsalvageable reputation. Despite the innocent façade their respective societies would approve of, these women commanded many deaths out of corrupt desires and fled the consequences.

With the use of many stylistic features, Shakespeare and Arthur Miller were able to display how ambition can work against characters rather than with them. The use of confined social and physical settings sophistically captures how hysteria can brew in the minds of the protagonists and their community, leading to illogical decisions or assumptions that cause death. Subtle symbolism shows how the fight for good and evil can be fought either inwardly, such as Macbeth’s fight for morality, or out in the open, like Proctor’s quest for truth, fighting Abigail’s string of lies. The alternative characterization of Abigail and Lady Macbeth show how those corrupt with power will tear down anything standing in the way of their selfish goals, costing them either their sanity or freedom. As these tales have proven, ambitious goals motivated by selfishness become fruitless and ultimately lead to failure, or death.