A Christmas Carol

Religion. To some people merely a jumble of letters but to others it is the soul of humanity, for better or for worse. From the very earliest men to the highest peak of our civilization it has been there to hold us together, or to make us fight. But is this a good or a bad thing, has it benefited us or hurt us, will it eventually destroy us. We can only speculate as of yet whether it will destroy us or not but we can decide whether or not it has benefited us. But that is the matter for our essay. The stance taken by this particular ramble is that yes the world has benefited and, if we carry on our particular course it will most certainly destroy us.

But where is the proof, what has caused my ideas to be so formed. To what gain is this essay written. To the latter, it is simply theological rambling in an effort to explain the who, what, where and why of humanity (I also thought it’d be a bit of a laugh). To the former, the proof shall come, be patient and you will see, you may even be sucked in and pushed onto a train of your own theological rambling.

Firstly, what is religion? It is the belief in a powerful controlling being like the Christian God, something far beyond us in power. But not necessarily something good or perfect, just look at the religion of the ancient Greeks. To them gods were more powerful than man, but they were also jealous, backstabbing, cruel, and uncaring. The gods of Ancient Greece fought each other constantly; the famous Trojan War was purely caused by the three lead female goddesses fighting over who was the prettiest. So I feel that religion is simply belief in various beings who have power greater than that of mans.

To begin with we must address the beginning - although one may start from the other end and work back, like starting with a laugh and creating a joke. Where is the proof that religion has affected us? The evidence is all around us as plain as the eyes on the person in front of you, although in a small number of cases you must look behind the sunglasses of the world to find it. To fully impress how evident our religion is today, take a stroll through the streets of Thailand and look at their shrines that litter the streets. Maybe then pass through Japan and see the many thousands of temples, or through any European country and view the hundreds of churches. Now, if just seeing a lot of religious shrines everywhere doesn’t prove they’re effect for you, have a look at how old they are, and see how long our religions date back. Finally look at our history, a history that relies largely on the records of wandering religious groups like the Jews or the aboriginals in Australia, one of the oldest pieces of literature still around, the Gilgamesh, is a piece of religious fiction. Religion has been believed and proven to exist since the early Stone Age.

Surely something so currently debated upon cannot have lasted this long, but for thousands upon thousands of years there has been no such debate. Not until the past few hundred years has there been any indecision on whether religion is real, all that’s ever been debated is which is the right one, a debate which is yet to be finished. Religion has existed and controlled people in its way for thousands of years. Wherever religion goes people seem forced to follow. So we get to modern times and it is still here controlling the vast majority of the world, indeed many of our worlds most potent political leaders are strongly religious, or at least they say they are. Take the Taliban, a religious group stirring up religious wars (at least that’s what America keeps telling us) and they affect the entire world. Many more examples could be listed on whether or not religion has affected us but that would mean dragging out the essay by several hundred unnecessary pages so I will assume you, as the reader, are not completely ignorant.

Now, the hard part, is the effect good or bad? I say good and to prove this we will simply look at the cultural side of the world. The renaissance, a massive bloom of art and culture centred largely in Italy. Most of the greatest, most appreciated architecture and art came from that time and it all contains an element of religion. Da Vinci’s last supper, st peters cathedral, the pantheon (a bit before the renaissance but I feel we should include it anyway). These examples are all religious and all beautiful. Then we’ve got Greece about 2 thousand years before that with the Parthenon and their famous vases. Or in China with its many incredible temple and the Great Wall of China. All of this is just a small fraction of the incredible art and architecture that covers the world. Religious people were among the first to write and record and some of the world’s greatest principals come from it, like the anti materialism of the Buddhists or the human rights of Christianity.

In a sense art in all its forms derives originally from Religion. This is why I believe that religion has benefited us. Of course there are two sides two every coin (well technically they have three) and only showing one would distort the reality of this essay over much. So we must get on to the dark side of religion, all the bad things it has done, which are not inconsiderable.

The worst possible thing about religion is the way it has controlled people and forced them to do things against their nature. People seem to do anything they’re told by their religion, whether by leaders in the name of religion or actual religious leaders like the pope. Look at some of the huge wars in history. The current war in Iraq is supposedly a fight between the Islam and the Christians. The battles between the Islam and the Hindus in India and Pakistan. The crusades, massive invasions to reclaim the ‘Holy Land’ by slaughtering thousands of people and literally removing their right to live. The terrible thing is Christianity is all about forgiveness and human rights. Most if not all religions have some basic principal, like, this that is good and kind. But some people distort this principal either through evil intentions or through misinterpretation of the holy texts. Mistakes of this kind are devastating to the regard of the religion and after the event that has occurred everyone downs it completely but there is no denying the fact that nearly everyone followed it gladly at the time. Then there are people doing things in the name of religion yet they do things that defy absolutely everything the religion is. Like the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) who are a group of rebels in North Uganda attempting to overthrow the current government in the name of a strict Christian rule. These people who are supposedly supporting Christianity are raiding villages at night killing and mutilating random people and kidnapping children to use as slaves and fighters. These children have been forced to kill other people under threat of their own death. How does this hold up Christian values? How can some one say something and do the opposite. Its more that sacrilegious its inhuman. Finally there is the opposition between religions. Christianity is probably the worst, its God claims he is the only god and the rest are all devils and its worshippers pagans. So the passionate Christians decide to hurt the worshippers of another religion by destroying their sacred areas and converting their people through the bribe of forgiveness if they repent. This sort of thing happened in Ancient Britain when the roman Christians wiped out the druids and various ‘pagans’.

So now we have seen both sides of religion and you’re probably feeling that religion couldn’t possibly be considered good in the long term when so much evil has happened through it. But if you look at the lasting consequences you’ll see that while the bad was terrible the good has survived and helped billions of people through charitable deeds and so on. I feel very strongly that we, as the people of this earth wouldn’t have made it as far as we have if it weren’t for religion. This is because we have a strong need to comprehend our environment. It is part of our being and one of the things which separates us from the animals. For a long time we have relied on religion to explain the extraordinary and recently we’ve had science, but we still have to have something. We must understand or we will have no knowledge and without our knowledge we are in a void filled with meaningless shapes and nonsense images. Without our knowledge we cannot learn to read or write and we cannot grow beyond the basic mindset, the bare necessities. So we have religion and, unfortunately, it tends to controls us and always has.

Now we get on to the future, in all its expansiveness. Will we be destroyed by religion? I have said I believe so and my mind set hasn’t changed during the course of this essay. So how and why will it destroy us? What can be done to stop this eminent destruction? Read on and you’ll find out.

Look at religion today. It is severely divided. We have five lead religions and thousands of smaller more exclusive religions like Wicca or Shinto. Of our main five we’ve got Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Most of these religions are at odds with one another. They all distrust one another and some are even at war. Christianity is at current fighting the Muslims in the form of America versus the Terrorists. The Muslims and the Hindus are fighting between India and Pakistan. There are plenty of wars in the world and a good lot of them are caused or based on Religion. Surely if religion is our excuse for war it will bring us down. We cannot survive too much longer without some disaster, such as a nuclear war, (the nuke being the divine weapon given by god to bring justice to the non-believers) destroying us. In fact the only thing that can save us, other than the complete abandonment of religion (not a good idea as people like to have a little faith and our current politicians don’t seem to fill the gap), is a united religion. But it cannot be one of the existing religions because the only way to achieve that would be a global jihad, indeed a global religion may only be achievable through war. But should we somehow achieve this global religion it would have to be one without too many rules other than pray and be good otherwise it would become as controlling as the old ones and sub sects would form with different interpretations of the rules and we’d be back to the drawing board. Also it must allow for science so we may expand our technology.

To conclude this extraordinary essay (well is say extraordinary…) I’m afraid I must ramble some more. Religion has been necessary for our progression but it cannot take us any further. We must now abandon it, too some extent, to science. Science forces us to fully comprehend everything and figure out, from how it came into being what to do with it. Religion just says god did it so don’t mess with it. Or instead of running to science alone we could form a balance, something that allows for progression but also allows for faith. For instance we could have a faith similar to the Ancient Greeks. They did not believe the gods made the world the gods were simply there as a separate race, homo extraodinarius or something. This allowed the Greeks to progress, which is why so much math and science and philosophy comes from that time. We must learn to create a balance in all things but especially in our faith or we will destroy ourselves and all that our faith has given us.

Thank you for travelling this philosophical ride with me, William, I hope you have enjoyed your trip. I may be commissioned to write further essays on a subject of your choice. If you are interested leave a comment with this blog. Thank you and good-bye.

Rhymes

Be Careful:

The danja
Of nostalja
To one who's
Growing olda.


A night near Reivilo:

Men at a party, brown faces slash
The night with teeth, and laughter, and pain
Slowly moving, slowly talking, I was rash
And listened well, was told in vain.

Of eighteen years spent making cheese
In quivering tones, soft and pleading
A small brown man, denied life's lees
And all of comfort in the age he's reaching.

The second man, good Doc, my drunken friend
Told of hate, and theft, and a curious detached
Casual brutality, too much for those forced to spend
Live in minutes, the years by apartheid snatched.

In the roaring of the fire I saw the roaring of our fate
The sparks of love tremble up, each trembling inch
One inch less; overwhelming hate
Menaces round, and the masses of the human flinch.


Business As Usual:

He sat again on the rock.
The same one.
Burned out veld or the green
Fucking suburbs.

Why can't I be better?
He asked
Smarter, wider awake, tougher?
He wondered.
Better than what?

In a certain round of human effort
Where men (mostly men)
Pursue war by other means
It is better
To be tougher, smarter, wider awake.

Than that guy who will shortly be
Snared, all unknowingly
In your cunning web
Or you in his.


Happiness Recipe:

There is nothing easier than
To be happy, you know
You just - put it away
Be sensible - the matrix ends.

The model is well established
For happiness. It is thus and
Thus and thus and thus.
Take and apply. Add the ingredients.
And subtract the poisons.

Love, hate, power, desire
Dis-contentment, ambition, will to grow.
And nothing can go wrong
Go wrong.


Arica Cafe

This lonely place
This bare cafe
These chairs, these walls
That smile, that hair
Coffee in a coffee grave
Those breats! that arm
Bored people, neon lights lit
Purple tables, cigarette ends
Shimmed thighs, unfolded knees
Those legs! that waist
All unavailable in this
Lonely place.


Toning down the sex act (grey audience):

That certain act
You can perform
He said
But please, by God
On the bed
I find our men
Each limp little pen
Have certain desires
And blow-hole fires
Their grandmothers they wouldn't
Allow to intrude
What I'm saying
Excuse me, he blew
Is this, that some, a certain amount
Of ugly sin, is welcome
But don't, square the account
Don't fill it in
Its hard for some
To see the bum
They've just become
Private thoughts
Half-hidden must stay
Or private thoughts
Will blow us away.

And what is a liar?

And what is a liar?
My son asked me
How do you tell
When the chips are down?

Who blinks, I said
And looks away
And fidgets and thinks
Of another day.

Still puzzled he said
But, how do you tell?
The long stories and all the facts
Laid out in rows and logical racks?

That’s more subtle, I said
Some believe their lies
And if lies are believed then where is the lie?
And where is the truth, if truth you want?

Still puzzled he looked
And so should remain
For truth and lies are subtle constructs
And outside the ken of our mortal domain.

Are Americans Stupid?

Are the citizens of the United States stupid?

Let’s consider this carefully. Bush uses the reaction to 9/11 to push the US into a war to topple Saddam. He claims that Iraq is a threat to US security and that Saddam is somehow linked to 9/11. Both these claims were widely disputed at the time, and both have since been shown to be wrong. Indeed it is now clear that the Bush administration itself believed in neither the threat nor the link. So why did Bush drive so hard for war in Iraq? Presumably this had something to do with the hubristic notion that the US, as sole superpower, can create reality. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, and others bear a heavy responsibility for this. Another factor was no doubt the urge to finish what daddy had started. Perhaps to avenge, in some obscure way, daddy’s failure to finish off Saddam when he had the chance. Perhaps a factor was indeed oil – at the very least to the extent that oil ultimately underlies all western policy towards the Middle East.

So Bush pushes the US into an unnecessary war in Iraq. What are the consequences of this? Could these consequences have been foreseen before the war started?

Any war has immense costs in human lives and human suffering, in the destruction of infrastructure and national wealth, in bitterness, alienation and anger. This one has all of that, in spades. The cost in lives is borne firstly by Iraqis, then by American GI’s, then by the soldiers of the other countries involved, and finally by miscellaneous journalists, foreign workers, and others caught up in it.

A further consequence of this particular war is that Afghanistan, which is where 9/11 truly did originate, has been neglected. The Afghanistan war was certainly necessary. It was a necessary response to the 9/11 outrage, waged on a government that openly supported Al-Qaida, and that would have continued to do so had they not been removed. But the war in Iraq prevented the necessary follow-up and nation building that was required in Afghanistan. Without that follow-up Afghanistan would/will revert within a few years to the same state it was in before the war.

So the focus on Iraq threatens to undo the gains of the successful war in Afghanistan. Imagine if the hundreds of billions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of troops, that have gone into Iraq had instead been used to build and stabilize Afghanistan. That would surely have created a stable, friendly nation of growing prosperity at the heart of what has always been a region of dangerous instability. The benefits would have flowed on to increased stability and growth in Pakistan and other surrounding nations, and would have been an ongoing rebuke to the medieval Iranian government instead of a goad and an opportunity for that difficult country.

So instead of a horrible but stable and ultimately doomed government in Iraq and a friendly and stable government in Afganistan, we have the latter reeling under a resurgent Taliban while NATO troops fight a war that they don’t have the means to win, and we have a war without end in Iraq. So far so stupid.

But that is just one set of consequences of the war in Iraq. Lets examine further the geo-strategic picture. The Iraqi conflict has now evolved into a civil war. I know that Bush and his people don’t accept this characterisation, but they have a powerful incentive not to. Thousands of people are dying every month, only a fraction of them occupying troops. This is a civil war. It seems highly likely that the result will be a fracturing of the country into Kurdish, Sunni and Shia dominated entities. In effect this has already happened. The consequence of that is massive long-term instability in the Middle East, adding risk both to America’s oil supply and to America’s great ally, Israel. Another consequence is vastly increased influence for Iran, a Shia nation and America’s great enemy, in the Shia dominated new Iraq – a neat irony. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and the rest of them should take a bow at this point – they already look like geopolitical geniuses and we have only just started.

Lets look at some other consequences of the war in Iraq. The affect of the invasion of Iraq on Muslim opinion was powerful. Muslims everywhere adhere to the notion of an Ummah, a word that means something like 'Christendom' would have meant in the west several hundred years ago. Muslims do see all their fellow Muslims as part of an Ummah, a brotherhood of the shared religion. An attack on a Muslim country is taken to heart by all Muslims, not just those we call fundamentalists. The invasion of Iraq sent a shiver down the collective spine of the Ummah. The sympathy for America generated among the Ummah by the 9/11 attacks, which was strong enough to withstand the war in Afghanistan, evaporated. Fear and loathing took its place, a fear and loathing that is refreshed every day as the blood-soaked images beam out from Bagdad.

Surely this polarisation was just what Al-Qaida wanted when they started to attack America ten years ago? They wanted to create a world war between the west and the Ummah, leading ultimately to the creation of an Islamic superstate, run of course by their holy selves. That is a pretty unrealistic objective, but if they can get the American president to play along then who knows what may be possible. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and the rest can now step forward for their second, or is it their third, bow. Well done guys.

Continuing our examination of the consequences of the war in Iraq, lets consider world opinion. That there has always been a strain of Anti-Americanism throughout the world is a natural and inevitable result of America’s pre-eminent position in the world. Just as some people, and some part of all people, will at one time or another rebel against the “powers that be”, whether parents, school, the traffic warden, or one’s own national government, so there will always be dissent, some of it permanent and entrenched, to any American government. I think most Americans understand this and, correctly, don’t worry too much about it.

But what has happened as a consequence of the war in Iraq goes well beyond this normal background of dissent. The world is wary of America in way it has not been before. And I am talking here about many of America’s natural allies. No-one, not even a superpower, can afford to squander the good will of the whole world. The result of this has been, I believe, a diminution in America’s power. Power is diminished if you have to use force, or the threat of force, to achieve all your ends. And if you piss off all your friends, and can no longer rely on friendly co-operation, then you have to actually use force, or its threat, all the time. This is where Bush is leading America. I happen to believe that a strong America engaged in the world and acting in such a way as to hold the support of reasonable people in the world is a good thing. Bush and his cohorts have largely destroyed the global goodwill necessary to this ideal. Whether this loss of goodwill is permanent only time will tell. But it is another consequence of the war in Iraq.

It is worth considering the war itself and who is fighting whom. Firstly, let us be clear that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. That is indisputable. In fact Saddam was a secular nationalist, not an Islamist. He was a natural enemy of Al-Qaida. Bin Laden and his henchmen would have been delighted to see the end of Saddam. The end of Saddam also gave Al-Qaida the opportunity to tap a well-spring of horror for the war among the Ummah. The war has been a great recruiting sergeant for Al-Qaida. So in the cracks and interstices of the civil war - that murderous killing spree between Sunnis and Shias - groups inspired by Al-Qaida weave their poison, making sure the war will not end, stoking it up, and gleefully killing Americans whenever they get the chance. Meanwhile Bush pretends that the whole thing is just “those terrorists” and that America now has a field in which to take them on (rather than a field in which they are created more quickly than they are destroyed). And so America faces a war of attrition. Who can afford to lose more lives in this war? The last war of attrition America fought was in Vietnam. Nuff said.

A lesser consequence of the war in Iraq is also, of course, the destruction of the political career of Tony Blair. There is some irony in Blair’s untimely end, and Bush’s continuing prosperity. Blair was elected again and again by a real majority, and had the warm goodwill and support of most of the British people. And high hopes, at least partly fulfilled, of being a good PM and a boon to his nation. Bush of course was elected, at least the first time, by an actual minority of the popular vote, and with remarkably low expectations even from his own supporters, and has proved divisive as President. Bush is responsible in a way that Blair is not, for the Iraq war. But Bush won an election after the start of the Iraq war, while Blair has been destroyed by the Iraq war. This perhaps brings us back to the question asked in the title of this essay, but let’s leave that for later.

In general I am inclined to absolve Blair from too great a responsibility for the war. I don’t think he wanted it, I think his policy decision was basically to stay in with America, a policy that Britain has followed unwaveringly since the First World War. His mistake, probably, was to support them far to enthusiastically. And that finished him off.

So far I have touched only briefly on the human cost of the war. But let us re-visit that for a moment. War is a terrible thing, but some wars are necessary. However to deliberately create an unnecessary war is a great evil. Bush and his team bear a heavy burden of moral responsibility here. Tens of thousands dead, including many of their own people, an enormous haemorrhage of America’s national wealth, the destruction of much of Iraq’s infrastructure and the remnants of its ancient heritage. Add that to the political and strategic consequences outlined above, and you have an administration of such staggering incompetence and sheer malevolence that it simply beggars belief that Bush is still President.

But hold, cry the supporters of this war. Saddam has gone, the people of Iraq are free. It was worth it for that. Certainly Saddam is no longer the leader of Iraq, and certainly he was a monster. But never before has America committed itself to war for the purely humanitarian purpose of removing a bad guy. Saddam is in chains and much better for it. But Saddam was no threat to America. Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. Saddam had been under stringent sanctions for 10 years. Saddam did not even control his own airspace. He was boxed in and contained. Bin Laden on the other hand, evidently the person most responsible for 9/11, remains at large, still free, still inspiring acts of unspeakable cruelty, still cocking a snoot at America. Where are those morons in the White House? Let them step forward for another bow.

Ah, but the Iraqi people are now free, you insist. Very well, they are free. And a particularly fine quality of freedom they have. They die at a rate of 4,000 a month in Bagdad alone. Their country is occupied by foreign powers. They are poorer than they were. And their previous lack of freedom was, to put it bluntly, never our problem. But their current “freedom” certainly is.

I think at this point one should ask, as I did above, whether the consequences of the war in Iraq could have been foreseen. I am certain that they could have, because I personally foresaw most of them. I know that is not a satisfactory answer to the reader of this essay, because I may be lying. However the answer satisfies me, because I know it is true, and I know I have no special insight or knowledge. If I could see all this, then so could anyone.

Which brings us neatly back to the original question. Are Americans stupid? I think we can say that their current administration is. Perhaps not individually, but the group of them, acting under the hubris of their own status and their perception of America’s power, and lacking any real moral compass (because lacking any real desire to run the country for the betterment of its citizens) committed at act of staggering stupidity in leading America into the war in Iraq. The real charge is probably higher than mere stupidity – it is badness, moral emptiness, a cynical desire for power for its own sake, all hidden behind the Bible, family values, and the rest of their empty bumph.

But to return to the original question. Are Americans stupid? Clearly they are not, and asking the question is a mere rhetorical device. But given that Americans are not stupid how have they ended up with this bunch running their country? I think the obvious answer is as follows: Before 9/11 it was politics as usual. A tough campaign, a homely good guy with instant name recognition, an uninspired campaign by Gore, and the notion that while Bush was nothing special, at least he could do little harm. And even then, let us not forget, Bush actually lost the popular vote.

After 9/11 everything changed. There was the immediate rallying round effect. There was the successful war in Afghanistan. There was an extended period in which Americans were willing to give their leaders all the rope they needed. The Bush administration grabbed this opportunity. The next election was essentially a war time election – these are never lost by incumbents.

And so here we are today. Young American men and woman dying daily in Iraq, Iraqis dying hourly in Iraq, the perpertrators of 9/11 resurgent in Afghanistan, the Muslim world fearful and angry, America’s prestige at its lowest point ever, Israel lashing out pointlessly at Lebanon, totally bereft of ideas, America’s geo-political security compromised, the real terrorists still active, and no-one with any clue as to what comes next. And Bush on American television, telling American parents that their children in Iraq are dying in the war on terror, in a war to make America safe.
Let freedom reign!

Macbeth

Macbeth As A Tragedy

‘Macbeth’ is commonly known as one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, but does it conform to the accepted conventions of a tragedy? Though most readings of ‘Macbeth’ meet the tragic conventions, especially the fatal flaw and the decline of a hero, it can also be interpreted as a non-tragedy due to the lingering question: was Macbeth’s tragedy the result of his ‘fatal flaw’ or was he merely the pawn of the Witches and Lady Macbeth?

To understand why ‘Macbeth’ is a Shakespearean tragedy, you must first know what that means. A Shakespearean tragedy is made up primarily of the following points: The protagonist must start at the height of his fortunes and fall fast from there, in the end he must die; all of this must be caused by a fatal flaw in the person’s character. Other factors are that the antagonist generally survives, the audience identifies with the protagonist and there is often god/fate in the mix. ‘Macbeth’ meets most of these points, particularly the fatal flaw and the fall from grace.


The play begins with Macbeth at the height of his fortunes. He has just gained his second thaneship, he is a loved and respected war hero, the king himself is simply ‘itching’ to give him further honours: “only I have left to say, / more is thy due than more than all can pay” as King Duncan exclaims to Macbeth in Scene 4 of Act 1. Till this point, Macbeth’s fortune had all been gained through lawful deeds, although there are suggestions that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth had discussed the matter of kingship prior to the play: “What beast was’t then / that made you break this enterprise to me?” cried Lady Macbeth when Macbeth said that he would not kill the king. From the moment that Macbeth committed the murder, his mind degenerated until in the end it gave up and sent him on a suicidal confrontation with the enemy. Most tragedies possess this trait, including Hamlet and Oedipus, and it allows for a tragic tale, a great man falling from the glorious heights to the lowest he can go, in the case of Shakespearean tragedies, death.

A tragedy is not simply about the decline of an individual. It is about the decline of an individual through that person’s deeds and most particularly through that person’s fatal flaw. The fatal flaw is a trait in a person’s character, such as ambition, that most people possess but that the tragic hero has to an extreme degree. Macbeth’s fatal flaw is ambition. His ambition is powerful, but until the prediction of the witches, it had been bound and kept at bay by his moral judgement. When he felt assured of the success of his ambition his morals and “milk of human kindness” began to lose the battle for control of his life. Macbeth’s mental battle can be chartered through his various soliloquies and conversations with his wife:

“If good, why do I yield to that suggestion,

Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs

Against the use of nature?”

In this speech, spoken by Macbeth immediately after hearing the first of the predictions, you can see his morals beginning to waver in the face of temptation, and the idea of wearing a murdered king’s crown seizes his imagination. From there his morals slide into oblivion leaving only his ambition, which turns him into a murderer.

The question of whether ‘Macbeth’ is a tragedy arises from the possibility that Macbeth was not responsible for his own downfall. There are two other parties who could be considered responsible for Macbeth’s downfall: the Three Witches and Lady Macbeth.

It can be gathered from the text, especially the first Witch’s speech in Act 1 Scene 3; and from their predictions, that the witches can control the weather, predict the future and probably influence, but not control, people’s minds. Perhaps the witches knew how Macbeth would react to their predictions and what would happen to him if he listened? In this reading, the witches could be seen as controlling or forcing Macbeth to do the things he does, perhaps even summoning the dagger Macbeth saw in Act 2 Scene 1:

“Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come let me clutch thee:

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.”

However, the idea of Macbeth, an innocent man brought down by scheming witches, does not conform to the conventions of a Shakespearean tragedy. This reading of Macbeth would be uncommon in today’s society, as belief in witches has declined and people are more likely to believe that a man is capable of committing the terrible deeds that tarnish Macbeth’s name. But in Shakespeare’s times it is likely that much of the population laid the blame on the witches and their satanic powers.

The other person who could perhaps be blamed for Macbeth’s initial, fatal, action is Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth spends her time trying to break Macbeth’s moral code. She herself dreamt of being Queen, or King as she sometimes suggests (“Come, you spirits / that tend mortal thoughts, unsex me here” [Act 1 Scene 5]), and to achieve this she played upon Macbeth’s ambition and pride, two deadly vices. She called him unmanly and cowardly; forcing him to do the deed that went against every moral he’d ever known. Lady Macbeth knew exactly what to say to Macbeth to bend him to her will, laying the blame of Macbeth’s downfall upon her and away from him. The irony in Lady Macbeth’s usage of her husband is that she herself had not the strength he had. She calls him cowardly but, when she’s alone, she admits that she would have done the deed had not the king “resembled / My father as he slept” (Act 2 Scene 3), in this she admits her weakness. She goes further to confirm this when, after Macbeth has committed the crime and taken them beyond the point of no return, she snaps and her guilt breaks her apart: “Not so sick, my lord, / As she is troubled with thick – coming fancies / that keep her from rest” (Act 5 Scene 3) as the doctor says to Macbeth.

To conclude, I believe that in terms of the codes and conventions ‘Macbeth’ is clearly a Shakespearean tragedy. Though there is suggestion of his being pushed into his downfall by an outside source, I interpret it as being his fault, his fatal flaw, his ambition. He was conscious of his acts right the way through, he knew he was doing wrong and he still did not change his course. My reading reflects modern sentiment: the lessening of belief in the supernatural and the greater acceptance that people can do evil. These things show that the fault, and the tragedy, lies with Macbeth and no-one else.