Jean- Paul Sartre, "Huis clos", Lecture plurielle - publié le 27/08/2007

Résumé du document

Basing your essay on specific extracts from the play, would you say that, according to Shakespeare, fate determines man's action, or that man is always free to choose his own course of action?

According to masters of literary theory, a tragedy draws the destiny of extraordinary people fallen down from their upper status into the common world because of their faults. Typical of tragedy is the influence of extraordinary forces out of human control on the action, which contributes to the idea of fate acting against human will. Tragic heroes, as Racine says, are “ni tout à fait innocents, ni tout à fait coupables” for they partake of their misfortune without always being conscious of that. In this sense, this quotation raises an important issue of tragic literature: the question of the ambiguous responsibility of tragic heroes in their own fates. In 1688, Shakespeare tells us in his play Macbeth the story of an ambitious man who becomes a murderer to be the king of Scotland. Is Macbeth, the sanguinary king, only a victim of a horrible fate, or does not Shakespeare rather imply that he also contributes to his own fall? To answer this question, let us first analyze the role of fate in Shakespeare's play Macbeth, to wonder then whether Shakespeare thinks that his heroes are responsible for their own actions or not.

Extraits

[...] Shakespearian heroes, just like classic tragic heroes, contribute to their fates by trying to fight against it to make the witches' predictions lie. When Macbeth decides to kill Macduff's wife and child after the last predictions of the witches in Act IV, Scene 1 asserting that Macduff was dangerous, he does not understand that this murder will be the reason for Macduff to become dangerous: now he wants to get revenge on Macbeth for this massacre. And so this murder by Macbeth will lead to the accomplishment of the two other predictions of the witches, even if Macbeth believes there is no chance that they become true: death by a man not born from a woman when Birnam wood enters his castle. [...]

[...] By assuming God's condemning of Macbeth's deed, Shakespeare explicitly says that his hero is responsible for what happened. Besides, the evolution of the characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth within the play is also a way to condemn their actions. On the one hand, the growing madness of Macbeth can be seen as a kind of punishment for what he did. On the other hand, the contrary evolution of his wife, who appeared at the beginning of the play as an ambitious manipulator without conscience or humanity, and becomes more and more human through the play, is also a way to clearly condemn the characters' actions. [...]

[...] First of all, it seems impossible to deny the capital importance of fate in Shakespearian tragedies, for they play a key role in the dramatisation of the action, especially in Macbeth. In Macbeth, plenty of elements give the spectator the impression that the characters suffer from a tragic, unchangeable predetermined fate. The characters of the witches can be seen as central in this play for many different reasons. Firstly, by essence, witches are supernatural creatures, and so they add to the realism of the play's action a kind of mystic atmosphere, and give the spectator the impression that there is something in the action that cannot be controlled by humans. [...]

[...] Shakespeare makes the spectator clearly understand that the tragic end of Macbeth is not simply due to fate, but is also the result of the characters' free actions. Several scenes in the play show us how Macbeth is torn between his conscience and his ambitions. In the seventh scene of Act One, for example, the spectator witnesses a mental struggle for Macbeth between his ambition and his conscience. This internal struggle implies that Macbeth has to make a choice between ambition and integrity, and in this way it suggests that the murder of Duncan is the result of this choice. [...]

[...] Even if fate seems to be the framework and the central issue of Macbeth, the spectator is confronted throughout the play with characters who want to challenge supernatural forces. Lady Macbeth, who wants to influence the course of time by killing Duncan to make the predictions become reality can feel the future in the instant”), is a good example of such a challenging attitude towards supernatural forces. Tragic irony is used by Shakespeare in this play to show how his heroes, while they try to make the predictions lie, contribute in fact to their accomplishment. [...]