An Adaptation to Isolation

   By the end of the theatrical work of The Tragedy of Macbeth, the main character, Macbeth, is isolated and seemingly fending for himself.  This is not always the case, however.  At the beginning of the play, Macbeth is well liked and seemingly content with the world around him.  This all changes when King Duncan crowns Malcolm heir to the throne.  Out of rage and jealousy, Macbeth carries out a plot to kill King Duncan so that he himself could become the new King of Scotland.  By the end of the play, Macbeth has become an extremely arrogant tyrant overly concerned with worldly pleasures, isolated in his own small world.  Through his greed for power throughout the course of the tragedy, Macbeth manages to detach himself not only from a rational thought process but also from his fellow members of the human race.  Edward Hopper’s Summertime created in 1943 portrays a woman outside her building in New York City.  It is a sunny summer’s day in the typically bustling city, yet the woman is standing alone on the steps of her building, isolated in the middle of New York from other people.  On a perceptual level, one has to consider why the woman is isolated from the rest of the population.  Perhaps this image portrays the woman’s detached and indifferent consciousness of the world around her.  Though both Macbeth in Macbeth and the woman in Summertime have entered a world of solitary, one cannot be sure if it is by similar means.  However, both characters appear to have similar thought processes; they are solitary individuals in two different worlds full of people.