In the tragic play of Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, one of the major themes is greed, and how it can overtake and destroy logic and reason. In this play Macbeth's greed to become king and stay at that position destroys his human quality of logic and reasoning. One of his main motifs to become king was his wife, Lady Macbeth. She was the only one who wanted Macbeth to become king more than Macbeth did. Lady Macbeth wanted the power of being queen more than anything else in the world. She was the one who persuaded Macbeth into killing King Duncan for himself to become king.
A good example of greed destroying reason is in act I, scene viii, lines 31-64. This is where Macbeth uses his logical reasoning to try to talk himself out of killing King Duncan, but his greed to become Ruler of Scotland takes him over and he does it anyway. After Macbeth becomes king his greed to stay in that position rises as he starts to think less about killing and just does it. He gets rid of anyone in his way or who he thinks knows about his dirty deed. He hires three murderers to kill Banquo, "O, treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly! / Thou mayst revenge. O slave. [dies]"(III, iii, 17-18). Macbeth also uses the same murderers to kill Macduff's family, and they were supposed to kill Macduff but he was inn England planning an attack on Scotland. "Sinful Macduff / they were all struck for thee!" (IV, iii, 224-225). At the point in the play where he kills Macduff's family he has very little, if any, reasoning ability. His greed has taken him completely over. Although not exactly greed, cockiness and overconfidence are levels of greed. This side of Macbeth shines through in act IV, scene i, when Macbeth meets the witches for the second time and has his fortune told, after the first ones came true. After the witches and Hecate, the ringleader of the witches, make up a quick batch of haste, the three apparitions come out of it and give Macbeth warnings.
