gainst Macbeth's castle atop Dunsinane Hill "come against him," Macbeth responds with the following:
             "That will never be. Who can impress the forest bid the tree unfix his earthbound root? Sweet bodements, good! Rebellious dead, rise never till the wood of Birnam rise, and our high-placed Macbeth shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath to time and mortal custom."
             Macbeth is far too panicked and disillusioned to take the apparition's warning in any sense besides a literal one. The Macbeth at the beginning of the novel would take the statement much more warily, perhaps taking action to insure that the trees of Birnam wood were destroyed, but this Macbeth has come to the witches in a desperate search of consonance and some sort of protection from the supernatural, and is willing to interpret anything said as something that will help him.
             The key idea of reason versus desire is important to the story because it is desire that ultimately leads Macbeth to his demise. All reason he has seems to be taken away by Lady Macbeth's silver tongue and replaced by greed, a greed that tragically metamorphisizes the heart of a nobleman to a bloody tyrant.
             The idea of attempting to control the future is displayed through two basic forms in Macbeth. The first is through Macbeth taking the initiative to insure that his prophecy will hold true, and the second is through Macbeth actually trying to fight fate and defy destiny. After he has killed Duncan, Macbeth th
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