How is Macbeth felled at the end of the play?

At the bloody climax of this violent tragedy, MacDuff, the lord whose wife and young children were mercilessly slaughtered by Macbeth’s order, ultimately fells Macbeth.

To fell is to cut down. Usually it is a word used with clearing trees, but it describes what happened to Macbeth on many levels. He was not just executed; he was cut completely down and his tyranny cleared from Scotland.

Before Macduff actually stabbed him in battle, Macbeth was...

At the bloody climax of this violent tragedy, MacDuff, the lord whose wife and young children were mercilessly slaughtered by Macbeth’s order, ultimately fells Macbeth.

To fell is to cut down. Usually it is a word used with clearing trees, but it describes what happened to Macbeth on many levels. He was not just executed; he was cut completely down and his tyranny cleared from Scotland.

Before Macduff actually stabbed him in battle, Macbeth was being felled in many other areas of his life. His evil ambitions had turned him into a murderous monster with no regard for human life, very different from the man in the opening scenes who loyally served King Duncan. He alludes to this himself in Act V scene 5 when he says,

”I have almost forgot the taste of fears.

The time has been my senses would have cooled

To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair

Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir

As life were in ’t. I have supped full with horrors.

Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts

Cannot once start me.”

By the end of the play, the Scottish lords had deserted him, the witches had deceived him, and the people of Scotland despised him. His wife had committed suicide, and everything he had desired and fought so hard to gain has been lost.

Macbeth has not heeded any warnings or advice because an  apparition the witches had conjured told him, ‘none of woman born/shall harm Macbeth.’ This leads Macbeth to believe that he is almost invincible, that he cannot be felled by anyone who has a mother.

However, Macduff exposes this final deception when he tells Macbeth he was born by cesarean section. Macbeth realizes he is facing his own demise. Macduff wins the swordfight and mounts Macbeth’s head on a pole.