Macbeth And Beowulf: Evil Defined By Human Preoccupation

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one thing on his mind,
the throne. When he became the king, he envied Banquo's having heirs who would
be rivals for the throne. The Christian also developed the theory of the great
chain of being. It basically stated that a person could not and was not allowed
to change his social status. Thus in the play, everyone eventually turned
against Macbeth, who had broken the great chain of being by taking the throne
from the rightful king. At the end, Macbeth died as an evil being who had
broken all the Christian rules.
The nature of evil also became unclear as it got more complex. In Macbeth,
the play began with the three witches' meeting. To a first-time reader, it
would appear that these "weird sister" were the evil ones, because it was a
common human perception. Who could be more evil than a witch who vowed to
punish a sailor only because his wife cursed her and refused to give her some
chestnuts. As the play continued, one might become skeptical about the
witches' ...

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