Macbeth is not evil. Instead he is ambitious. It is precisely this ambition, combined with the deception of the witches' prophecies and his wife's greed for power, that transform him into an evil "dead butcher" (Shakespeare 5.8.71), as Malcolm says, at the end of the book. He is driven to kill Duncan, his good friend, and Macduff's family for reasons he is led to believe are justified. All in all, Macbeth is as much a victim as the people he killed. Ambition in any character is quite easy to spot, and Macbeth is no exception. His desires and aspirations become clearer as the story progresses, but even at the beginning, his need to achieve more and more is present. He sees his destiny as an “act of expansion” (Shakespeare 1.3.131) something that is destined to continue to grow. While it is this very way of thinking that ultimately leads to his death, it is admirable. Everyone has a great appetite for glory and success. Macbeth happens to have more than an average man. He can't be blamed for that. Certainly one could argue that his ambition drove him...