1/31/2024 0 Comments Macduff macbethWe see just how much Macduff loves his country in when Malcolm tests his loyalty by pretending that he'd be an even worse king that Macbeth. Then why doesn't he become king? Because he accepts his natural place: as a friend to his country and to his true king. So, if Duncan has feeling without action, and Macbeth has action without feeling, then Macduff seems to have both. Women were too flighty to have any deep feelings, except maybe for their kids. For hundreds of years before that, men were the emotional ones. Quick brain snack: we're used to thinking of women as being the emotional ones, but that's actually a fairly recent -say, 300 years or so -invention. In fact, they just might feel more deeply than women, or unmanly men like Macbeth. Malcolm tells him to man up (literally), and Macduff says, sure: but he's also going to "feel it as a man" (4.3.261). After his wife and children are killed, Macduff is flailing around a little, saying things like "All my pretty ones? … all my pretty chickens and their dam/ At one feel swoop?" (4.3.255-258). This isn't a cowardly act, but rather a brave one intended to aid Malcolm in enlisting the English against Macbeth.īasically, in Macduff we see a guy who can feel and act. And, instead of prattling on about his suspicions, he decides to leave for England. He's also the first to see that Lady Macbeth is fainting. He's the only one who asks why Macbeth killed the guards senselessly. (Apparently, even grief can't keep him from busting out elaborate metaphors to describe death.) Even more than the king's own son, Macduff appears to mourn the loss of the king, and the man.īut he's not so overwhelmed by grief that he can't pay attention to what's going on around him. We first hear Macduff as he expresses raw, honest grief at the King's murder: "O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart/ Cannot conceive nor name thee! … Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope/ The Lord's anointed temple, and stole thence/ The life o' the building!" (2.3.73-79). Macduff isn't a man of many words, which means… everyone listens when he talks. So, what makes this 17th-century #1 Dad tick? He Has Feels He's a loyal Scottish nobleman, a loving father and husband, and an all-around great guy. In a game of Marry, Date, or Dump, we'd dump Macbeth (duh) date Malcolm (nice boy, but too many responsibilities) and marry Macduff. In the final combat between hero and anti-hero, this humanity is recalled once more when Macduff cries out, "I have no words my voice is in my sword." It is his very wordlessness that contrasts with Macbeth's empty rhetoric.(Click the character infographic to download.) But I must also feel it as a man" enables the audience to weigh him against Macbeth, an unfeeling man if ever there was one. Even when (in Act IV, Scene 3) Malcolm urges him to "Dispute it like a man," Macduff's reply "I will do so. When he hears of the death of his "pretty chickens," he has to hold back his emotions. Like Macbeth, Macduff is also shown as a human being. When he knocks at the gate of Macbeth's castle in Act II, Scene 3, he is being equated with the figure of Christ, who before his final ascension into Heaven, goes down to release the souls of the damned from hell (the so-called "Harrowing of Hell"). Second, the news of the callous murder of his wife and children (Act IV, Scene 3) spurs him toward his desire to take personal revenge upon the tyrannical Macbeth. Macduff is the character who has two of the most significant roles in the play: First, he is the discoverer of Duncan's body. Macduff is the archetype of the avenging hero, not simply out for revenge but with a good and holy purpose.
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