Macbeth's most crucial flaw is his ambition. It drives him to commit unnatural and evil deeds to fulfill the witches' prophecy as he understands it. At the beginning of the play Macbeth is described by his peers as a virtuous and loyal thane to the king, his kinsman Duncan. But as soon as he encounters the witches and hears their prophecy that he will become king, he is consumed by what he calls his "black desires." He acknowledges his own ambition when he vacillates over murdering Duncan, admitting that he has no cause to kill the king except his own ambition:
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other...
The problem with Macbeth's ambition is that it drives him to rise above his place in society. It upsets the natural order of things, and unleashes a flood of violence that consumes Scotland.
Another of Macbeth's flaws is his willingness to listen and to be directed by others. His wife, convinced that Macbeth might be too "full of the milk of human kindness" to carry out the brutal deeds necessary to fulfill what she sees as his destiny, challenges his masculinity and his courage to goad him into killing Duncan when he hesitates. Macbeth also places total faith in the witches, which causes him to interpret their cryptic prophecies in ways that turn out to be misguided. For example, he believes that the witches' statement that he can never be killed by anyone "of woman born" causes him to be overconfident, and when he discovers that Macduff was born by Caesarian section, thus technically fulfilling the prophecy, he feels that unnatural forces have tricked him. Still, it must be said, he allowed himself to be tricked, and doing so brought him to the fateful meeting with Macduff outside Dunsinane.
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