Universität Mannheim

Philosophische Fakultät

Lehrstuhl für Anglistik II

HWS 2007/08

PS:

Shakespeare´s Great Tragedies

Term Paper:

The Evil within

A Motif Analysis on Shakespeare´s ′Macbeth′

Sebastian Zilles

Februar 2008

---

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction: 2

2. The Evil: 3

2.1. The Evil in Etymological and Semantical Perspective: 3

2.2. The Faces of the Evil or the Unseizable Horror: 4

2.3. The Other versus the I: 6

3. Text Analysis: 8

3.1. The Rise and Fall of Macbeth: 8

3.1.1 Act I (p. 95-121): 8

3.1.2 Act V (p. 193-211): a brutal monster or just a pitiable victim?: 12

4. Conclusion: 15

Bibliographie: 16

Primary Literature: 16

Secondary Literature: 16

1

---

1. Introduction:

Roy F. Baumeister maintains in his magnum opus ′Evil inside Human Cruelty and

Violence′1 that the "[e]vil is always ready and waiting to burst into the world".2 At first

glance this statement seems exaggerated and entirely pessimistic. But today´s news

demonstrate that Baumeister´s statement reflects reality: nearly every day, newspapers

and TV report about death, brutal crimes, gang violence, rape victims and natural

disasters. Although the

evil

has different faces and differs in its dimensions, it always

goes along with two core aspects: harm and chaos, which cause a breakdown of the

stable, peaceful and rational patterns of the ordinary life (cf. Baumeister,

Evil inside

Human Cruelty and Violence

5 and 69). While, on the one hand, the victims suffer, the

perpetrators on the other hand derive pleasure from causing harm. Not rarely the

question rises: What made these people turn to the dark and

evil

side?

A prominent literary example of this phenomena is Shakespeare´s tragedy

Macbeth

3 . Not only can the tragedy be seen as a setting of different degrees of the

evil

,

it also reflects how ordinary people turn to the

evil

side. Therefore, the question:

how

does the protagonist Macbeth turn evil?

will be the object of investigation.

The following chapter sheds light on the

evil

: first, in an etymological and a

semantical perspective; second, by definition, trying to give a complex image of the

evil

. In a third step, a popular belief that the

evil

is associated with the phenomena of the

Other

will be disproved. Instead, this work supports the opinion that the

evil

is rooted in

everyone of us and waits to be activated. All in all, chapter two functions as a

theoretical basis for the text analysis.

The third chapters examines the play: it centers around the character of Macbeth

and portrays his rise and fall by analysing the contrasting acts I and V. All things

considered, the desired goal of this chapter is to emphasise that Macbeth is not an

entirely

evil

character. Moreover, it is important to note that the characters of the weird

sisters will not be analysed in an own section. Although they are a spawn of the

evil,

they will not be examined in detail, because they are supernatural apparitions and thus,

out of reach for a rational explanation. Finally, the character of Lady Macbeth and her

1 Roy F. Baumeister,

Evil inside Human Cruelty and Violence

(New York: W. H. Freeman and

Company, 1997).

2 Baumeister,

Evil inside Human Cruelty and Violence

14.

3 William Shakespeare,

The Tragedy of Macbeth,

The Oxford Shakespeare Macbeth

, ed. Nicholas

Brooke (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

2

---

personal nightmare will also not be analysed in on section. The work will exclusively

shed light on the male character.

2. The Evil:

2.1. The Evil in Etymological and Semantical Perspective:

Evil is defined in relation to good, as its opposite.

(Baumeister,

Evil inside Human Cruelty and Violence

67)

Annemarie Pieper ´s opus ′Gut und Böse′4 points out that people seldom use the

adjective/noun

evil

in their everyday speech. People rather speak of a

bad

person

or a

cruel

deed (cf. Pieper,

Gut und Böse

11). But why are people afraid of using this word?

The answer is simple: because

evil

is such a strong and utmost negative word. Drawing

the conclusion that somebody is

evil

,

implies an immovable statement. Thus, one

assumes that a perpetrator acted intentionally the way he did, striving for a destructive

goal (cf. Pieper,

Gut und Böse

11). In order to categorize the word, Pieper concludes

that the

evil

and its counterpart the

good

belong to the ,,Sprachspiel der Moral".5

This moral connotation can be traced back to the early word forms:

evil

(OE

yfel

) and cognates like the Dutch

euvel

and the German

übel

are surveyed to come from

the reconstructed Proto-Germanic form *

ubilaz

or rather the Proto-Indo-European form

*

wap-

plus zero-grade form

*up-elo-

. Moreover, Germanic forms such as ME

uvel

OHG

ubil, uphil

or OS

ubil

refer to the root

up

(over). Being considered from this point

of view, the root

up

means ′exceeding due measure′ or ′overstepping proper limits′.6

Therefore, the adjective

evil

is defined as ′the antithesis of GOOD in all its principal

senses′ or a little more detailed ′morally depraved, bad, wicked, vicious′. Then, the noun

is simply defined as ′that which is

evil

′ (cf.

The Oxford English Dictionary

471).

4 Annemarie

Pieper,

Gut und Böse

(München: Beck, 1997).

5 Pieper,

Gut und Böse

15.

6

The Oxford English Dictionary

(Oxford University Press, 1989 2).

3

---