Superstition Affects Human Behavior by Lexy M.

Throughout Macbeth many conflicts and challenges of the mind arise. Macbeth is faced with peer pressure, prophecies, and tests of the mentally and physically strongest. Macbeth is told by three witched that it was his fait to become Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth was naïve and took what the witches told him to heart and believed he was in fact the destined Thane of Cawdor. Many lives, including his own were lost in the battle to reach this. With the demanding motives from his wife and limits set by his peers, Macbeth stopped at nothing. Macbeth is faced with many challenges due to his superstition which is a direct result after being introduced to the witches in the very beginning of the play; this affects his natural and human behavior greatly.

The witches introduced Macbeth to the idea that he could in time become king which started the downfall of this sanity and health.
“Thou shall get kings, though thou be none. All hail, Macbeth and Banquo!” (1.3.69-70)
When Macbeth heard this news he believed the witches prophecies and began to consider the greatness of what they had said.

Though the idea that the witches convey seems so figurative Macbeth almost cannot believe that he would have to go through with the killing of Macduff.
Macbeth “My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, shakes so my single state of man. That function is smothered in surmise, and nothing is but what is not.” (1.3.149-152)
What the witches say seem unreal and something he would likely never do. He is reluctant to believe them and everything they said. However with Macbeth’s unsympathetic, and manipulative wife, Lady Macbeth, he is pushed to his extreme through harsh taunting and is pressured into commenting many inhumane crimes.

Macbeth’s moralistic personality is greatly warped over time after meeting with the witches. Macbeth becomes obsessed with believing the prophecies and he falls deeper and deeper into superstition and a careless way of life. ;
Macbeth “I have almost forgot the taste of fear. The time has been, my senses would have cooled to hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir as life were in’t. I have supped full with horrors; Direness familiar to my slaughterous thoughts cannot once start me.” (5.5.10-16)
Macbeth has become so wrapped up in trying to become Thane of Cawdor that he will stop at nothing until he gets what he wants. Macbeth has gone on a spree of destroying people and family members. Doing anything and everything he has to do to get what he wants. Things and ideas that would have used to scare him and seem inhumane now becomes things that are just another obstacle in the way that he needs to eliminate, and will do everything in his power to.

Macbeth a once noble and wise character falls into a pit of dishonesty and arrogant behavior. His life is troubled with bleak and dark haunting of Macduff’s ghost and paranoia quickly consumes him as he struggles to maintain a clean record and close in of becoming the king of Scotland . This is all a result of Macbeth falling hopelessly into superstition. If he hadn’t believed what the witches told him that day in the woods Macbeth would have stayed content with Thane of Glamis and continued living a life without stress and constant worry.