Macbeth: Victim, Villain, or both?
In my opinion, Macbeth, the man who became king after killing Duncan was both a victim and a villain in the play. At first he played as a victim of Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth being so evil and dark led him to killing Duncan to become king with her insults towards Macbeth. An example of this would be in Act 1 Scene 7 when she said “If you weren’t a man, then what kind of animal were you when you first told me you wanted to do this? When you dared to do it, that’s when you were a man. And if you go one step further by doing what you dared to do before, you’ll be that much more the man” towards him because Macbeth was trying to back out on the plan they had for that night of the killing. The way he played a villain was towards the end when he was killing innocent people and family, not being influenced by the Lady. He wanted to kill Banqo due to the fact that his son would become king. Macbeth got really selfish with the amount of power he had when he was king. Another would be that he went to go kill MacDuff’s family. One example of this was when Macbeth was planning to kill the women and her children “"The castle of Macduff I will surprise; Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o' the sword His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls that trace him in his line".