Essay Sample about Lady Macbeth: “The Future in the Instant”

Lady Macbeth is nothing short of crazy and powerful, with intentions for the throne and stuck in a body that does not allow her; leading her to one solution, and when her husband Macbeth reveals the prophecy that he will become king, she demands it. She wants the throne, and she needs it now. Lady Macbeth’s outrageous use of diction, utopia, and appeal to credibility fulfills her need to persuade him into her mischievous plans. 

Diction is the most evident device used in Lady Macbeth’s speech. When Lady Macbeth uses diction, she pushes Macbeth’s buttons just the way she likes. This use of diction is appropriate for this speech because Lady Macbeth can only rely on her words to get Macbeth to listen. Saying a range of positive to negative things about him to pull him every which way so that he does what she needs to. “…the poor cat i' th' adage” (I.VII.45). using words to belittle Macbeth then, “Great Glamis, worthy Cawdor, /Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter” (I.V.45-46) when she makes him feel powerful with different words. “Look like th' innocent flower, But be the serpent under ’t” (I.V.46-47) using a metaphor to describe Macbeth’s expressions as a flower, yet to still be “the serpent under.” This creates a heavy base of relying on an emotion-based thought process, which she successfully carries out through her constant badgering of Macbeth.

Lady Macbeth creates a sense of security and power when she drives Macbeth toward murder. “This ignorant present, and I feel now/ The future in the instant” (I.V. 48-49) meaning that Lady Macbeth can feel the future, her future as a queen, she can taste the power. Making this security blanket provides Macbeth, the audience she speaks to, inclined to do whatever will get him to this utopian world. Macbeth, later on, decides to act upon it and is relished in the utopian world where he is king which means that Lady Macbeth succeeded in convincing Macbeth of this sense of hope and power and his life on the throne.

Appealing to her credibility as his wife, I am your wife why would I betray you, that is the situation she had created. This situation where she says that no matter what, he must do this for her when Macbeth becomes too nervous to carry the murder through. Being Macbeth’s wife is the only character Lady Macbeth seems to have. Picking on him and belittling Macbeth due to his inability of being a dutiful husband when she would be a dutiful wife. “Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums/ And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you/ Have done to this” (I.VII.57-59) using her position as his wife to plunge his head full of motivation to do what his wife said simply because she is his wife. Did Macbeth listen to his wife? Yes. Lady Macbeth is successful in getting her husband to obey her word.

Lady Macbeth’s argument is also counterproductive using fallacies and has simply no logic in her speech. Ad hominem is used to make the situation for Macbeth where he is ridiculed and dismissed. “Like the poor cat i' th' adage?” (I.VII. 45). Lady Macbeth uses ad hominem to push Macbeth, telling him that he’s not a man or that he’s the poor old cat in a story to make him feel less, less masculine, less like a man. She constantly attacks his character by calling him names and this makes her argument less credible due to the negative attacking.  As Lady Macbeth attacks Macbeth she restates that she is his wife, appealing to her authority as his wife; This leads Lady Macbeth to say:

I would, while it was smiling in my face, 

Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums

And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you

Have done to this (I.VII.56-59)

This situation where she says that no matter what he must do this for her because he promised this when they got married. Do it for me as I would do for you because that is what we swore to each other, at this point in her speech she did not have any backed-up reasoning, so she does the only thing she can do, she uses her only position of power to suffocate Macbeth into whatever she says.

On Aristotle’s triangle of three modes of persuasion Lady Macbeth is lacking in logos whereas we can see the ethos and pathos she uses. Lady Macbeth uses Pathos when she uses fear, humiliation, degradation, and praise to persuade Macbeth. She uses ethos when she uses her credibility as his wife to persuade him. Yet there is not an example of her using logic to persuade him. That is why the triangle is heavy on pathos, has examples of ethos, and barely touches logos. 

With the use of diction, Lady Macbeth made Macbeth think about his own character. With the use of utopia, she made him hope for something better. With her use of her authority as his wife, she left him no other option except to listen to her and only her. Lady Macbeth’s speech was effective not only in getting Macbeth to murder but in making him the king. Her speech directed him to do as she said. She used whatever she had, and Lady Macbeth used these devices through and through. She walked every step of the way with Macbeth, through the murder, and through the power he held. She created his character, his power, his throne, all his self-doubt, and every insecurity he might have about himself heightened, that is what Lady Macbeth did. She is just that good. She was the woman behind the curtain where no woman would ever dare stand, she pulled his strings, she pushed and pulled him wherever and whenever she wanted. She. Made. Macbeth.