I feel that the witches play a very important role in Macbeth. The represent greed, lust, and darkness. In the beginning of the film we can see just how dark they are. The audience sees them taking eyes out of statues, spray-painting red on their eyes; all of the statues are of the Virgin Mary.
In the beginning when they are meeting they ask when they should meet again, “When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in the rain?” All three of these environments are dark, cruel atmospheres. This gives the audience the idea of what these witches are here for. They say they want to meet Macbeth, but they don’t explain why they will meet with Macbeth. This confuses me, are they just randomly picking Macbeth for no good reason, is it just random? When they meet with Macbeth they seduce him into this greedy, lustful character. His greed is for power and for this power he needs to become violent and kill. These witches cause all the violence because they are greedy, lustful, and full of dark
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It’s true that these witches are dark, lustful, and greedy. But we can ask the question: Do they really cause all the violence mentioned or do their prophecies provide MacBeth with an excuse to carry out something he may have already considered himself? I realize this is far fetched, but I think if we’ve learned anything in this class it is that it is possible to make arguments for many different ideas, motives and themes. Even though it was the witches who, in the audience’s perception, put the ideas of becoming Thane of Cawdor and King into MacBeth’s mind, it was MacBeth who decided to carry out the prophecy of becoming King. Being Thane of Cawdor came upon MacBeth as a surprise, and he didn’t have any influence in this prophecy coming true, but he inarguably completely takes the idea of becoming King into his own hands, and passes the idea onto Lady MacBeth, who in turn is the one becomes most determined to transform this prophecy into a reality. Obviously, I’m not arguing that the witches aren’t full of devious and evil intentions, but I am bringing into question whether or not they were the actual cause of the forthcoming events.
I don't feel the witches are to blame for MacBeth's actions. The witches are not the ones that went out and did the wrongdoings. They are dark, but that doesn't make them to blame. They get a bad rap and it's easy to try and put the blame on them but I feel like looking into it a little bit more shows that they aren't as terrible as they are portrayed. They didn't trick MacBeth either, because he is the one that was so reluctant to know. He was the one that almost forced the witches to tell him. He is the one that had the greed in him all alone. It can be debated if Lady MacBeth helped with that, but it certainly wasn't the witches. All they did, in the end, was tell him the truth. It may have been not the straight forward truth, but it was the truth. If MacBeth wasn't so worried about what the witches had to say, and he lived his life by actually going through it instead of trying to be told, he would have been much better off.
But isn't just a bigger crime to plant the idea? Just because you didn't pull the trigger doesn't mean you didn't hire the hitman. I think the witches had a purpose or a reason for meeting with Macbeth but like many other instances in this play reasoning and evidence and truth is obscured...perhaps left for us to decide? We don't quite no why Lady Macbeth took it upon herself to want to kill Duncan, nor do we fully understand why Macbeth went along with this (remember how we couldn't really decide whether he was ambitious or not). The witches could be compared to the use of gossip. Like in the plays we've read and what we'll definitely see in Othello, gossip and misinterpretation cause huge problems for all of Shakespeare's characters. They planted the seed and watched it grow. That makes them guilty.
It is always up to great debate whether or not the witches themselves are the cause of Macbeth's downfall. They show him the path with their twisted prophecies. But nevertheless I ultimately believe that, like life usually is, the cause of Macbeth's defeat is a great blend between Macbeth himself and the witches. The witches show him the path, but it is Macbeth who chooses to walk down it. But nevertheless had the witches not shown him the path he may have never fallen to begin with. This brings into question the very nature of Macbeth's character before he meets the witches because he may have been drawn to becoming King anyway and the witches may have just been playing off an ambition that was inevitable but did not manifest. Like everything in life, its complicated and full of grey area, which is why there are so many interpretations of a polarized nature that still can be argued with some fact. As to why the witches manipulate Macbeth, it might be just because they're wretched hags and that's their way of having fun. That's what it seems like to me anyway.
- dp
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