Ambition. What is it well pretty sure that’s what I’m talking about? Ambition it’s something we all have inside us. its that feeling that we have to conquer our dreams. We all have it, everyone’s is different. your ambition could be to beat a sports record, could be a job that you have been wanting to get for your whole life. But ambition isn’t always good; your ambition can ruin your life in an instant, like what happened with Macbeth and Anakin Skywalker. To help me explain this I’m using four texts: Macbeth, StarWars revenge of the sith, Gattaca and Ozymandias.
Macbeth shows his ambition by chasing the witches prophecy and hoping to become the King. Initially Lady Macbeth was the more ambitious one out of them both and she was the driving force to push Macbeth to kill King Duncan so Macbeth could become King. Lady Macbeth said, “Yet I do fear thy nature / It is too full of the milk of human kindness”. Lady Macbeth says this because she thinks Macbeth is not mentally strong enough of being capable of killing King Duncan. It takes this pure ambition from Lady Macbeth to crack through Macbeth’s shell of kindness and defy the man that he once protected. Macbeth’s ambition never came from himself, it only came from other people telling him either what was going to happen of what he should do. If he had never met the 3 witches on top of that hill, he would have never found this deadly ambition that sent him insane until his death.
In the movie Star Wars Revenge of the Sith, Anakin Skywalker is having dreams of his wife dying in childbirth. These were the same type of dreams that he had before his mother died. Anakin goes to seek guidance from Master Yoda. “The fear of loss is the path to the Dark Side”. Yoda says this, warning Anakin that if he listens to his ambitions of saving his wife, he will fall into the hands of the dark side. Anakin also goes to see Palpatine and this is where he plants the seed of the dark side in Anakin’s head. “Darth Plagueis had such knowledge of the Dark side he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying” . Anakin responds with, ‘Is it possible to learn this power?’ and Palpatine says, ” Not from a Jedi” Palpatine says this to win over Anakin’s mind and ambition to mislead him towards the Dark Side of the force. This is showing that to get to your ambition, it is inside of you and not in an external force like the one that Palpatine is giving him. in the end , Anakin turns to the Dark Side and lets his ambition cloud his mindso he is not capable of seeing that in fact he is the one who is killing his wife.
Gattaca is a movie on the ambition of Vincent, a naturally born child. He was born into a world where humans were capable of genetically engineering their kids to have the perfect person. He has his life long ambition of going to space, but because he is a naturally born child he is deemed to be weak and unusable because he is not as amazing as everybody else. Vincent finds a mam called Jerome who was born by genetic engineering to be the best swimmer. Jerome has no ambition because he was born perfect and was told what he was good at from a young age, but when he did not come first in his swimming race, but second, he lost his point to live and stood in front of a car, consequently turning him into a paraplegic, making him incapable of walking. Vincent uses Jerome’s blood, urine, skin, hair and all other bodily substances to be capable of faking his way into the Gattaca facility so he can accomplish his life long ambition of going to space. Towards the end of the movie, Vincent finds his brother and challenges him to a swimming contest. During the swim, his brother stops him and asks how he is beating him. Vincent replies with “This is how I did it, Anton: I never saved anything for the swim back.”Vincent says this, meaning that getting to his ambition he would never look back because if he did he would be able to push himself to a point that he shouldn’t be capable of. This is showing Vincent’s ambition perfectly because he would never step down or walk back until he could finally succeed his ambition .
Ozymandias is an ancient king from an ancient land where he ruled over his kingdom. This poem was the perfect example of what happens when your ambition runs out and you die. We meet a traveller walking through a desert and he finds an old statue of Ozymandias. It inscribed “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings” meaning he was once a great man with supreme power over his land. But the meaning of this poem is not that he is a great man, it is that once you die and your legacy is forgotten your ambition to succeed and get power will mean nothing, and your legacy will fall into the sand and turn to nothingness, like Ozymandius’.
In conclusion, ambition can be a great thing but it can also be deadly. As seen in Macbeth and Star Wars, if you let someone choose your ambition it can turn deadly. But it can be good if you let it naturally flow, like with Vincent in Gattica and how he did almost anything to be able to complete, and be capable of getting to his ambition so he could prove to everybody that just because he isn’t perfect it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t need to be the same. In the end, like Ozymandias, there is nothing you can do when you die , because as hard as you try there will always be the last person to ever think about you.