Plato, one of the world’s most influential Greek philosophers, once said that “we can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy is when men are afraid of the light”. William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a case study on the tragedy of human life, consisting in the protagonist’s vain attempts to stretch the limit of things which can never become unlimited, in turn trying to reach the infinite by absurdly adding to the steps of the ladder of the finite. The essence of Macbeth is that blame is not the appropriate response to the evil that derives from human weakness. In a tragic universe, we are all flawed precisely because we are human, and Shakespeare’s tragic hero Macbeth embodies this inexorable feature of life. However, “the central feeling of tragedy [becomes] one of waste” (A.C Bradley) when Macbeth’s mind traces its modes of operation in the course of deliberating phases of hesitation, the final acts of decision, and the moments at which the fortunes reverse.
          Shakespeare possesses great mastery when it comes to exhibiting the movement of the human mind, and renders audible the silent march of thought. Macbeth’s relationship with the future can be expressed through a rhetorical device called prolepsis, in which an anticipated event is represented as having already taken place. Macbeth’s connection with such a concept functions as both a figure of speech and a figure of thought. His many deliberating phases of hesitation and inner arguments that take place within his conscience become a means of self-persuasion and a way to dismiss troublesome thoughts; “Shakes so my single state of man that function/Is smother’d in sunrise, and nothing is/ But what is not,” (I, iii, 139-141). Macbeth reveals an impulse to dismiss the negative side of every tentative prediction and act in spite of his severe doubts. He believes that he has received an “earnest of success” (I, iii, 131), a pledge of an abundant future reward. He thus reflects that he is willing to dismiss the supernatural force of these predictions. When he contemplates the reality of what he must do in order to achieve the throne, Macbeth tries to lessen his anxiety of regicide, dismissing “present fears” (I, iii, 136) as less important workings of his “horrible imaginings” (I, iii, 137). Throughout the play, Macbeth proves unable to shake his present disquiet and apprehensions. Nonetheless, he proceeds to pursue a life “smothr’d in sunrise” (I, iii, 140) implying an ever-escalating paranoia. The assurance of Macbeth is based on a deeply imagined resolution of perplexities, inherent in full exposure to life. Freedom from the tyranny of time and illusion is related, at the deepest levels of consciousness, to the central affirmation of the spirit. Conversely, the obsessed awareness of time without meaning, like the subjection of mind to appearance is revealed not simply as consequential on false choice, but as conformist to it. There is a similar assurance in the use of the uncanny, in that aspect of the play’s imaginative structure that impels us to say that Macbeth’s crime is unnatural, but that the values against which evil is defined are in some sense grounded by nature.
          Nevertheless, an attribute of assurance gives Macbeth’s and our minds a sense of our connection with reality, to which our most secret actions are apparent, and from whose chastisement, a form of innocence which can defend us. “It is certain that men do not tell themselves who they are.” Therefore, what makes Macbeth’s character truly tragic is the knowledge he possesses toward the matter – he is well aware of the course of events, but tries to convince himself and his fate otherwise; “I must fight the course.” (V, iii, 2) All the same, as reason comes to light, passion impels Macbeth’s common sense, displaying the trepidations that proceed and the horrors that pursue acts of blood; “I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hack’d/ Give me my armour.” (V, iii, 32-33). The emphasis on the evil present within Macbeth’s character – “Why should I play the Roman fool and die/ On mine own sword? Whiles I see lives, the gashes/ Do better upon them.” (V, viii, 1-2) – is eroded by an awareness of the dramatic value of virtue, providing the moral contrasts which are exceptionally important to Shakespearean tragedy. Macbeths grows in self-awareness and knowledge of human nature, though he cannot halt his disaster, contributing to the emotional development of the tragic hero. Shakespeare represents the internal forces of the mind in reasoning and reflecting, adding the anguish of remorse; “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more. It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/ Signifying nothing.” (V, v, 23-27). In the end, Macbeth feels a loss of purpose. What are we truly reduced to? We become parodies of ourselves, since in the end crime does not pay; morality does not pay, giving us a sense of waste; “I have liv’d long enough. My way of life/ Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf,/ And that which should accompany old age,/ As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,/ I must not look to have” (V, iii, 22-26). “There is no greater accolade or acknowledgement you can ever receive than the satisfaction of being truly respected and understood by others” (Lauren Troncone), an aspect missing in Macbeth’s tragic life.
          Moreover, Shakespeare tempers the constitutional character of Macbeth by infusing the “milk of human kindness” in a story of honour by puncturing the most violent perturbation and pungent remorse, naturally attending on those steps to which he is lead by the force of temptation. If the mind is to be medicated by the operations of pity and terror, no means are so well adapted to that end, as a strong and lively representation of the agonizing struggles that proceed and the terrible horrors that follow wicked actions. Other writers thought they had sufficiently attended to the moral purpose of tragedy by making the furies pursue the perpetrated crime. However, Shakespeare waves bloody daggers in the road to guilt – “Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible/ To feelings as to sight? Or art thou but/ A dagger of the mind, a false creation,/ Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?” (II, i, 36-39) – demonstrating that so soon as a man begins to listen to ill suggestions, terrors overwhelm and distract him. Personal affection often weeps on the theatre, while jealousy or revenge whets the bloody knife; however, Macbeth’s emotions are the struggles of conscience. His agonies are the agonies of remorse; they are lessons of justice, and warnings to the innocent. Shakespeare has set forth the pangs of guilt to separate the fear of punishment with the fear of insolence. “The heart of man, like iron and any other metal, is hard and of firm resistance when cold, but warmed, it becomes malleable and ductile.” Consequently, it is by touching the passions and exciting sympathetic emotions, not by sentences, that tragedy must make its impression to the spectator.
          Therefore, the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character such as Macbeth who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing – his sense of personal dignity. Tragedy is the consequence of a man’s total urge to evaluate himself justly, and his destruction in the attempt places evil in his environment. The flaw in the character is ‘nothing’, but his inherent unwillingness does not remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status. Only the passive, only those who accept their destiny without active retaliation are flawless. The tragic right is a condition of life, a condition in which the human personality is able to flower and realize itself. The wrong is the condition which suppresses man, preventing the flowering of his perception of the contrasting virtues of ‘right and wrong’.