Wuthering Heights and Macbeth Thesis - 1456 Words

Munisha Sarfraz Professor Leighton AP English Language amp; Composition 6/7/2012 Haunting Past â€Å"You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.† (Glidewell) People say that one should leave the past behind them, but the past is always following them, holding them down like an anchor. The past comes back as a ghost, causing sane people to go insane, causing them to drown in their own past. Heathcliff and Catherine in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and Macbeth in The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare died as a result of not being able to deal with their haunting past. Heathcliff, from Wuthering Heights, didn’t have an easy past. He’s an orphan that was brought to†¦show more content†¦Here, she tells Nelly that marrying Heathcliff would degrade her, and she would’ve married him if he wasn’t a disgrace to marry. She also says â€Å"Nelly, I see now, you think me a selfish wretch; but did it never strike you that if Heathcliff and I married we should be beggars? Whereas, if I marry Linton, I can aid Heathcliff to rise, and place him out of my brothers power?† (Bronte 87). Catherine believes that by marrying Edgar, she could help Heathcliff with his financial state and free him from Hedley. However that doesn’t happen, because Heathcliff overhears the part where she tells Nelly that it would degrade her to marry him and he decides to leave Wuthering Heights. What Macbeth, from The Tragedy of Macbeth, did in his past haunted him. It all starts when Macbeth hears the witches prophesy that he will become the captain and later a king. The thought of becoming king makes Macbeth happy and his thoughts drive to even murder to become the king. Macbeth says â€Å"My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,/ Shakes so my single state of man†(Shakespeare 1.3.4). He tells his wife, Lady Macbeth, about the prophecy and she pushes Macbeth to kill Duncan, the king, so he could become the king. â€Å"Lady Macbeth chides Macbeth and shares her plan with him on how to carry out the murder. Impressed by her guile, Macbeth agrees to go through with it that very night† (Hatch 436). After killing Duncan, Macbeth comes into power and becomes a