A simple act of violence can genuinely affect an individual's state of mind. Through violence, individuals feel empowered and are tempted to prolong their violent nature. This results in one heinous act, following with worse violence. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of A Boy Soldier, both authors effectively highlight a theme, that violence will ultimately lead to more violence. Both of the protagonists endure massive shifts in character that are induced by violent acts. Their first act of murder is what begins this vicious cycle and with the introduction of heavy influences, their characters dramatically change for the worst. As the protagonists enter this endless spiral, they become trapped with no point …show more content…
In the war, Ishmael has stripped away from his childhood home and kidnapped into the dreaded civil war, where he is forced to become a child soldier. Through the traumatic experiences of the war, Ishmael slowly loses his innocence and violence is bestowed upon him. While in his first armed battle, Ishmael must take another human's life and he states “My face, my hands, my shirt, and gun were covered with blood. I raised my gun and pulled the trigger, and I killed a man. Suddenly, as if someone was shooting them inside my brain, all the massacres I had seen since the day I was touched by war began flashing in my head” (Beah 119). Ishmael undergoes a massive shift in character as he moves from childhood innocence to a hardened murderer. This traumatizing event creates a huge impact on Ishmael’s life; it is Ishmael’s first experience as a child soldier and his first act of violence. This later induces more bloodshed, and Beah is soon “killing everybody” as if it were an everyday …show more content…
Prior to Duncan’s death, Lady Macbeth recognizes Macbeth’s inner turmoil and she takes matters into her own hands. Lady Macbeth advises him of her plan to kill Duncan and explains that she will conduct the evening's events. She states, “Look like the time. Bear welcome in your eye,/ Your hand, your tongue. / Look like th' innocent flower,/ But be the serpent under ’t. /He that’s coming / Must be provided for, and you shall put / This night’s great business into my dispatch, / Which shall to all our nights and days to come” (Shakespeare 1.5.55-61). This influence on Macbeth is what challenges him to kill Duncan. Moreover, although Ishmael is pressured by fear tactics, Lady Macbeth constantly questions Macbeth's manhood and repeatedly asks “are you a man?”. This causes Macbeth to feel inferior to his wife and urges him to prove his manhood. This overall results in Macbeth relying on violent acts to do so. Ishmael and Macbeth both struggle with overcoming their surrounding influences as they are heavily manipulated. Both influences attempt to justify the violent acts that encourage the protagonists to progress in their cycle of
Later on in the memoir, they named Ishmael the “killing machine” because he was so into violence and killing. The bad group he was with brainwashed him about his family and loved ones. He became addicted to cocaine, marijuana and brown brown which give him courage to fight and kill people without knowing it is wrong. Ishmael stayed with this bad group for a while; but later on his lieutenant gives Ishmael to the UNICEF.
Ishmael’s life in Sierra Leone was a series of victimization by rebel forces. He was constantly fleeing for his safety and tormented with the loss of dear family and friends. When it came to a point where Ishmael had to decide between killing or dying, the burden of taking a life was partially subdued by the fact that he was taking revenge against the very people that slaughtered his family, “Suddenly, as if someone was shooting them inside my brain, all the massacres I had seen since the day I was touched by war began to flash in my head…I angrily pointed my gun into the swamp and killed more people. (Beah 119). Violence also became an escape, Ishmael tells about the constant terror of running through forests trying to avoid getting shot by the pursuing rebels.
Could you imagine being a child soldier when you were 13 years old? Growing up with guns, blood, and constant murder? Ishmael Beah was a victim of those things; his childhood taken away from him and having grown up in what we would call total chaos. He grew up from ages 13 to 16 fighting for what he believed to be the good guys of the civil war. Beah was taught to kill the enemies by shooting, burying them alive, and cutting their throats.
After he was a boy soldier, he had to undergo rehabilitation to conform back to typical society. Ishmael did not adjust very smoothly, in fact he took a long time but eventually came around. Ishmael had mental consequences due to war. Ishmael’s
Ishmael has a flashback of his life in the war. In his dream he encounters a body wrapped in white bed sheets, and as he unwraps it he realizes it is his own face he is looking at. He then awakens, sweating and on the ground. He says, “I was afraid to fall asleep, but staying awake also brought back painful memories” (Beah 19). Even being in a different country cannot take away the hell that Ishmael has been through.
The demonstration of the narrator's imagination unconsciously leads his own thoughts to grow into a chaotic mess that ultimately ends in a death. By murdering, it’s his own way of finding peace. He is portrayed as being a sadist, sick man with an unnatural obsession for
All of this is conveyed by the passages,”A long way Gone,” and, “Babes in arms.” The war had disastrous effects on Ishmael. Can you imagine returning home to find your family and house in a burning mess. This is what happened to ishmael.
The Thane of King Duncan, Macbeth hears a prophecy that he himself will become king later on in the future after King Duncan. This then leads to Macbeth being overcome by greed. Since Macbeth greeds to be king so bad, he murders King Duncan and takes his place of the throne. Macbeth starts to live with so much guilt and fear that he commits even more murders to have his power safe. Macbeth is so confident in the prophecies that his life comes to a downfall and he gets killed by the people he did wrong.
Of all the failures human beings experience none are as crushing as those that are a result of following someone else’s desires. In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, the protagonist self-destructs because of his external forces as well as his own poor choices. An external force that influenced Macbeth includes Lady Macbeth’s strong goals, which she forced on her husband. Additionally, the witches impacted Macbeth’s choices by offering him their tricky prophecies. The blind greed that took over Macbeth’s life also impacted his choices.
Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth as a power hungry and vindictive women, whose character is against the stereotypes of a Jacobean woman. Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth as a deceptive woman, who uses the fact that she is a woman as a weapon. ‘Why, worthy thane, you do unbend your noble strength to think.’ Lady Macbeth is talking to Macbeth.
William Shakespeare portrayed the character Lady Macbeth to be extremely ruthless, malicious and manipulative. Thus, being the reason she could easily convince Macbeth to do her will, yet still put on such a convincing performance in front of those who knew nothing of her and her husband’s actions. Lady Macbeth shows her complexity constantly throughout the story when she shares her view-point on masculinity by demasculinizing her own husband, when she strategically plans the murder of the King Duncan, and finally when she finally goes crazy because of the guilt she possesses for not only her own actions but also turning her own husband into a
Lady Macbeth tried and attempted to fasten onto Macbeth’s inner feelings and attacked his level of masculinity. He is a easy person to manipulate once the future queen questioned his manliness. Macbeth tells Lady Macbeth that he cannot go through with killing King Duncan, she proceeds to tell him that he is a coward. To further convince her husband to kill Duncan is the utmost importance she said that she “would, while (her unborn child) was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed his brains out.” (Act 1, Scene 7, Lines
Mihir Sharma Ms. Dornford ENG 3U1-05 10 December 2015 Power and Corruption William Shakespeare in “Macbeth” and F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby, depict how greed for power and social status can make women ruthless and crafty in their aspirations. To achieve their ulterior motives, they can destroy lives through either pretense or manipulation. William Shakespeare depicts women as malicious in their intent who can camouflage their real intent to achieve their ambitions. Lady Macbeth is unable to pursue her dreams due to social constraints.
Lady Macbeth and Macbeth: The Manipulation of the Soft-hearted Disruption and criminality could be seen within the very first lines of the famous play by Shakespeare and towards the end as well. In this old Shakespearean play, Macbeth is a fierce warrior who receives the tittle known as the Thane of Cawdor by emerging victoriously from the battle of the Kingdom of Scotland. After this great battle, Macbeth encounters three unusual ladies who appear to be witches known as the Weird Sisters. The Weird Sisters claim in a prophecy that Macbeth will rule as the future King of Scotland. But, Macbeth begins to feel uneasy when he learns that King Duncan will be passing the throne to his, Malcolm, the Prince of Cumberland.
In Macbeth, Shakespeare displays how women manipulate men. Lady Macbeth’s ‘evil’ is an ideologically inscribed notion that is often linked to our literary tradition to strong female characters who seek power, who reject filial loyalty as prior to self-loyalty and who pursue desire in all its forms. (Thomas 82). In the story, after Duncan’s killing, Macbeth ended up feeling kind of bad.