Ambition is like one huge maze. Depending on which turn you decide to make, your life will be taken in a completely new direction. Once you have decided to take that turn, finding your way back to where you previously were is a whole other journey in itself. The turn that you decided to make could either lead you to your final destination or could leave you lost and disorientated. This strong notion of ambition is woven through the four texts that I will be discussing today, those being Macbeth, Ozymandias, Gattaca and Becoming. While unravelling the many layers of ambition in these texts I wanted to investigate in particular ‘What causes ambition to be a virtue’. I wanted to figure out why some individuals ambition is so immense that it becomes the main contributor to their success and for others it becomes the main contributor to their failures.

The poem ‘Ozymandias’ explores the themes of power, ambition and self absorption. Ozymandias regards himself as being the “king of kings”, he has placed himself on a pedestal and believes that he is all mighty and above everyone else. His ambition to be the most powerful person has pushed him to believe that he is superior to others, however in reality all that now remains of him is a “shattered visage”. All of his boasting about being the ‘king of kings” is highly ironic because he now is surrounded by a “colossal wreck” with absolutely no power over anyone or anything. Ozymandias, like many other powerful rulers seems to believe that his current power will withstand the length of time but as a matter of fact everything will eventually crumble and turn to dust. Ozymandias’s ambition was fuelled purely by his desire for power, he wanted to be eternally worshiped by the masses and was oblivious to the fact that time outlives power.

The character Macbeth in the play Macbeth is a clear example of how ambition can act as the opposite of a virtue. Initially in the play Macbeth is respected and admired by his fellow soldiers and by the king for being a brave and loyal soldier. Duncan even says that Macbeth “was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust”. However when the witches make an appearance in Macbeths life and prophesies that Macbeth “shalt be king hereafter” he becomes entirely consumed with thoughts of power. Macbeths ambition is not actually to be king but it is to gain the power that comes with the title of king. Macbeths life takes a steep decline when his ambition comes into play, he is unable to sleep, he becomes heavily paranoid and he is no longer respected by anyone. Macbeth’s ambition eventually causes him to feel like his “life’s but a walking shadow”, he doesn’t even feel like a person anymore and feels that his life lacks any real substance. Macbeth’s ambition does not positively impact his life or anyone else’s life around him.

Both Macbeth and Ozymandias have a thirst for power. But despite their constant efforts to maintain their power they are oblivious to the fact that everything eventually comes to an end. The authors of both these pieces of literature have used the symbol of dust as it represents lack of life. Macbeth feels that his life is now just “the way to dusty death” and Ozymandias’s statue stands all alone in the dessert surrounded by dust. It becomes clear that for Macbeth and Ozymandias, their ambition was a vice.

On the flip side, in the movie Gattaca, the main character Vincent’s ambition to achieve his goal of being an astronaut pushes him to overcome all of the obstacles in his life due to his ‘invalid’ genetic makeup. Gattaca is set in a period of time where your genetic makeup is seen as the most essential asset that you can have as person. In Gattaca possessing desirable genes is more sought after than the true desire that an individual had to succeed. The external influences in Vincent’s life, those ranging from his colleagues to even his family, viewed him as being weak and unable to achieve his goal. Vincent was disadvantaged from the second he was born, but society viewing him as invalid actually became his main motivation to prove them wrong and put everything he had in himself in order to accomplish his goal. As Vincent himself said best “I never saved anything for the swim back”.

In the autobiography ‘Becoming’, Michelle Obama recounts her life journey and the pressures that she faced while constantly feeling like she was representing her race. Michelle Obama recounts that from a very young age she had “a deep arsenal of ambition”, she wanted to succeed, not only for herself but for her community. While she was in her senior year of high school she attended a meeting with her guidance counselor. Even though Michelle Obama was a high achieving student who was on track to graduating in the top 10 percent off her class, when she told the guidance counselor of her plans to attend Princeton University the counselor replied by saying “I’m not sure that you’re Princeton material”. Michelle Obama felt that solely because she was a black female she has to be “twice as good to get half as far”. Like Vincent in the movie Gattaca, the external influences in her life that viewed her as inferior provided her with the greatest incentive to achieve.

While examining how these four peoples lives were influenced by ambition I reached my final conclusion about ‘what causes ambition to be a virtue’. In the two examples of negative ambition (those being Macbeth and Ozymandios), the two characters were fixated on the idea of power, not having power to better the world but having power to distract them from their true issues. Their ambition was destructive and not for the better good. On the contrast, in the two examples of positive ambition (those being Gattaca and Becoming), the two individuals used their ambition to either better themselves or to better society. They didn’t loose track of their morals along their journey to success but instead they used their morals as a guide.