Dire ambition, if expressed in an evil manner, can turn an entire person evil. For example, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are great examples of these. If ambition expressed in a positive way can change someone’s life for the better and fulfill anyone’s dreams. As shown in the movie Gattaca, by being ambitious enough you can carry out anything you want, even if it was to go to space. Or even in the poem Ozymandias where a king was obsessed with power and wealth but thought it was necessary and the most important thing to be remembered until the end of time known of as the “king o kings” but in the end being forgotten about, left alone berried under the sad. 
 


The role of ambition in Macbeth, by William Shakespeare shows how both Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth are exceptionally ambitious, taking very large measures to accomplish their targets. When Macbeth was promised a promising future as a leader it quickly led to his tragic downfall. Macbeth was once full of courage and bravery but because of the witches prophecy “All hail, Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter!” Macbeth’s strong ambition and his life spirals into guilt and sin which in turn leads to Macbeth’s frame of mind to collapse and unwind. The way Macbeth uses his ambition to accomplish his goals is in a way that the further he digs himself into getting what he wants to live, the further he digs himself into madness and death. Ambition is the key to Macbeth’s downfall, after killing King Duncan it lead him down a slippery path of murderous actions path which in turn lead Macbeth to guilt and insanity. “Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep.” By Macbeth killing King Duncan while he was sleeping at the same time Macbeth killed the concept of sleep for himself. In the end, Macbeth dies and doesn’t end up fulfilling his own prophecy which means that after all the ambitious stunts he pulled he only ended up accomplishing his target of being king for a very short period of time.

 


The poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley was about an Egyptian King from 1279-1213 b.c.e who was very powerful. Powerful leaders may want to wish that their power is immortal and will last forever but they are only swindling themselves. Ozymandias was one of those leaders, his ambition was to be “King of Kings” and to build an enormous statue of himself to show all the other kings that he was greater than them all, he thought if he built this staue above everybody they would feel belittled and small, worthless. But no, as time proceed and his power past away so did the sculpture, all that was left was the wrinkled lips from his Barron stone skeleton, all dry and drained of power and mite. Also “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert” the legs of Ozymandias’s pride and sense of achievement all alone, forgot by everybody that used to serve and love him. This links with the play “Macbeth” because Ozymandias states himself as”king of kings,” yet all that is left of his existence was a “collossal Wreck”. Meanwhile, Macbeth becomes obsessed with power and is only powerful for a very short period of time before, ending the play as “this dead butcher,”.

The movie Gattaca written and directed by Andrew Niccol is all about ambition and how if your ambitious you can reach your goals no matter how big or how challenging they are. The main character Vincent Freeman was not genetically engineered, so he was not legally allowed to go into space “which was Vincent’s dream”. Vincent worked as a janitor in his dream company but not working the job he wanted to work,  Vincent wanted to be an astronaut but the society that he lived in would not let him because he had a heart defect that prevented him to become what he wanted to become which was an “astronaut”.  Vincent was so ambitious and determined that he took the identity of Jerome Eugene. Jerome Eugene was genetically engineered, he was a competitive swimmer until he lost a major race and jumped in front of a car which left him paralyzed from the waste down. Since Jerome was genetically engineered he was able to become an astronaut there for Jerome was a perfect candidate for Vincent to use his identity to make his dream a reality. Vincent ends up going through procedures such as leg-lengthening so he was the same hight as Jerome. This proves that Vincent is ambitus because without ambition he would not be able to go through all of that only to go to space. He was so ambitus and so determined that he manages to convince his fellow coworkers that he is indeed Jerome and he was able to go to space and pursue his dream.

Throughout all these examples you now know that ambition can be used in many differnt ways. If someone was to use ambition in a good way, for example in the movie Gattaca where he used his own ambition to make his dream a reality. Then theres are cases of people using ambition is a negitive way such a macbeth.

All the examples i have just given you are all conected through the conceped of ambition because they all ended getting what they wanted, even if it was for a short period of time, theres ambitus stunts to get where they wanted work out.

Join the conversation! 1 Comment

  1. Luca, this is a very nicely constructed response to the texts and you show your usual sophisticated insight into the ideas that arise from our reading of a variety of texts. The Significant Connections standard requires you, however, to complete a response to four texts.

    Reluctantly, this is a Not Achieved.

    Reply

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