"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." - Lord Acton
This quote portrays very well one of the themes in Shakespeare's play and he would agree with it if he were alive. Throughout the tale of Macbeth you can see a constant downhill slide of corruption with the protagonist. This corruption is in direct correlation to the amount of power that Macbeth is able to gain. In the very beginning of the story Macbeth is just a warrior and a thane. With not too much power he for the most part level headed. When the witches approach him however, and tell him he is to become king one day, the idea of the power of being king begins to take over and corrupt Macbeth. He becomes so corrupt that he ends up killing his guest, whom is also his friend, king Duncan in pursuit of the crown. This is Shakespeare's way of showing that power can corrupt anybody.
Personally I can attest that power can corrupt people. I was a good and fair employee to all at PDQ before I gained power. My manager made the mistake of thinking it would be a good idea to make me a trainer at work. Of course once i became a trainer and gained the ability to tell others what to do I abused it. I became corrupt with power and very lazy. Anytime I had something to do or a manager told me to do something I simply relayed the job to my inferior employees to do for me. for months I sat around and did nothing at work until I quit.
I really enjoyed reading your anecdote about your job! I feel it outlines the idea that gaining power really messes up the person who obtains the power, and the fact it was a personal example really makes me feel as if it can happen to anybody. At first, it begins with giving one's inferiors more menial tasks and saving the more difficult tasks for oneself, but then it transitions to giving all work to one's inferiors, which leads to corruption.
ReplyDeleteI just have one question: did your superiors act as you did? As in, did they give all their work to their inferiors, and not complete all of their assigned work themselves?
I like your blog post and I think you did a good job analyzing how power can corrupt a person. As we see in Macbeth, power can cause people to do unthinkable things, in this case murder, but we also see that in our real world society. Now a days, people who have the same goals fight each other for it instead of helping each other which I think is a main cause of of this so called corruption. I think Macbeth faced the challenge of pressure from the witches as well as his wife, but also from himself because he wanted to be king. In my opinion, I don't think anything is worth sacrificing someone else's life for, but that might just be me. Overall, good job!!
ReplyDeleteI heard you tried to pull the same thing in my class the day I was out...
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