Act 1-Destiny or influence?

I think the three witches influence the all play. They appear at the beginning of the play and give prophecy. They say Macbeth will become first Thane of Cawdor and then king. Though this prophecy looks strange and even Macbeth himself does not believe this prophecy. However, the following developments in act 1 illustrates that the prophecy comes true. At this time, the prophecies have become the main clue of this play. Their prophecies lead the characters’ choose, and change their original mind. They toy with characters by using their knowledge.

In my opinion, most of things happened in our life are not predictable. We experience our life, so we experience those things; especially some of them are terrible things. However, we cannot choose to avoid those terrible things but have to go forward to experience them even though we are not prepared and not subject to pre-determined destiny. We are passive to receive what destiny gives us and have no idea about what’s going to be happening next. There is a frost around everyone on a stage and destiny is a person who looks at the stage, then decide what is going to be happening next to change characters’ course of life. In Macbeth, the three witches give prophecies to characters and just look at them to decide what they are going to do; however, they are not destiny because the characters in Macbeth are still having the right to choose which they can go and which kind of person they could be. 

On the stage, there are some things we can change by choosing which way we want to go, such as studying hard to get good marks in our tests. In Macbeth, the three witches just give prophecies and stay aside to look at the following developed. Characters have rights to choose which way they want to go. For instance, Macbeth is a brave soldier at the beginning of the play; however, he chooses to be a tyrant because he influenced by those three witches’ prophecies. If he chooses to be the Thane of the Cawdor and assist King Duncan, he will not stay in his criminal actions and never out of his guilty feeling. Moreover, he will not become to desire more power than he has now.

image from: http://www.phyllis.demon.co.uk/theatricalia/01smt/smt4049.htm