Bloody City

            In Macbeth, murder and death are a common motifs. Macbeth is a war hero and doesn’t exactly know how to control himself once he has started on a killing spree. This is Macbeth’s hamartia, or fatal flaw. The reasoning behind this is because he kills Duncan’s servants after the lords find Duncan’s dead body. That was not part of his original plan. At this point, he is improvising because he feels that he has to kill more people in order to protect his lie. He doesn’t know when to stop killing people, so he just keeps doing it. He’s a soldier; all he knows is to kill the people in his way, but he doesn’t know when to stop.
            Now, hamartia doesn’t just apply to Macbeth. No, hamartia applies to any tragic hero/villain. An example that comes to mind is Sweeney Todd from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. In the play, Sweeney is seeking revenge on Judge Turpin who falsely put Todd in jail because Turpin wanted his wife. So, Todd changes his name from Benjamin Barker to Sweeney Todd and returns to London to carry out his fifteen year old grudge. Along the way, Todd runs into Mrs. Lovett who runs a meat pie shop underneath where Todd used to work. She figures out that Todd is really Barker and pledges to help Todd in his quest for revenge. So, in order to attract Turpin, Todd must acquire the title of being the best barber in London, but there is someone in his way of that title: Adolfo Pirelli. Todd’s plan is to humiliate Pirelli in front of the entire town square, which is successful, but it is discovered later that Pirelli is really Todd’s former assistant. When Pirelli threatens to blackmail Todd, he murders Pirelli by slitting his throat with his straight razor. This is the first person that is seen killed. After this murder, a long string of murders occur to innocent people who just want a clean shave. Todd’s hamartia is his lust for vengeance. He isn’t taking it out on the person that he wants to take out, but on the random people that come into his parlor.
            Todd, like Macbeth, doesn’t know when or how to stop murdering innocent people that get in his way. That is his flaw. He is so consumed by vengeance that he doesn’t realize that no matter how many people he kills, he cannot bring back his wife or free his daughter from captivity. Similarly, Macbeth kills Duncan to gain the thrown. Then, from the murder of the servants, to his best friend Banquo and finally with the slaughter of MacDuff’s entire family, he has become completely insane trying to control the narrative.



           These two characters become blinded by either power or revenge and don’t know another way of dealing with it than killing a finite amount of people. But by killing all these people, they lose more and more of their humanity and their attachments to the physical world. Their flaw consumes them and leaves a hollow shell of the honorable men that they once were.