Similarities Between Nixon And Macbeth

The power-hungry individual follows a path to his own destruction, as did Macbeth and Richard Nixon. Full of greed and ambition, both men strived for a goal but fell to corruption. Kings and presidents obtain massive potential for wrongdoing; free will determined their tracks. A close examination of the way that Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States, and Macbeth, the fallen hero in the Tragedy of Macbeth, resorted to abusing power illustrated that the themes in Macbeth are still applicable today. The impulses started with the first initial power. Macbeth knew his fate, which was becoming king, by word of the witches, and Nixon rose up to presidency. Another similarity between the men included ambition. In Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” Macbeth expressed: “I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls on the other” (l, xii, 25-28). Macbeth didn’t have a fitting reason to kill King Duncan besides gaining power. In …show more content…
Macbeth, by free choice, contemplated whether or not he should kill King Duncan, until Lady Macbeth convinced him to. “I go, and it is done. The bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell (II, i, 62-64),” stated Macbeth. As soon as he perpetrated the thoughts and acts of murder, Macbeth maltreated his authority and, ironically, summoned himself to hell as he added more blood to his hands. With similar dominance, Nixon’s corrupt administration covered up the Watergate Scandal and instructed the CIA to stop the investigation, which was “an abuse of presidential power and a deliberate obstruction of justice” (Watergate). In an attempt to remain in power, Nixon destroyed evidence and discharged disobliging employees. These men, in favor of themselves, took down other people to gain leverage on their own