Destruction Of Innocence And Guilt In Shakespeare's Macbeth

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Blame seems to be a popular topic in today’s culture, but how does one decide who is to blame? Is it a matter of innocence and guilt, or are there gray areas and different degrees of guilt and innocence? Macbeth seems inherently guilty, but then you have to factor in his surrounding circumstances. Was Macbeth manipulated into it? Did sleep deprivation drive him crazy? Does the fact that he was mentally ill lessen his implications? I would say yes to all of these above, Macbeth committed many evil acts, but he is not to blame for the tragedy that became his life. The blame belongs to Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is the original culprit, the root of all evil in this case. Lady Macbeth pressured Macbeth into killing Duncan. The act of killing Duncan …show more content…

Research has found that “Sleep deprivation negatively impacts our mood, our ability to focus, and our ability to access higher-level cognitive functions (brain mechanisms involved with thinking, reasoning, learning, and remembering)” (WGBH). Macbeth could no longer sleep after he killed Duncan, so he acted rashly and made decisions without thinking them through. Macbeth became so filled with paranoia and jealousy that he killed his best friend and tried to kill his best friend’s young son. Macbeth hallucinated Banquo’s ghost and started screaming with an entire crowd of people around, he clearly was not thinking properly. Macbeth also killed an entire family out of anger and betrayal, Macbeth even cursed the witches; he was obviously not using reasoning skills. To counter those who believe that Macbeth caused his own downfall, I remind you that your argument is invalid because he did not actively choose to kill, it was a combination of manipulation, mental illness, and sleep deprivation made him murder people. Macbeth even revealed “Better be with the dead…than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy” (Mac.3.2.1). Meaning, Macbeth would have rather been dead than alive, not exactly something a healthy person would

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