Throughout Macbeth we see how persuasion can change a person and make them do things they would never imagine themselves doing. Lady Macbeth becomes very power hungry and persuades him to take out potential kings including his own family. After many deaths who is to blame? Lady Macbeth? Macbeth? The Witches? After all is said and done guilt takes over both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Persuasion and Guilt are two things that Macbeth cannot hide from no matter how hard he tries. Does Macbeth regret his decisions?
Guilt is the feeling that comes over someone after they have done something that they feel they shouldn't have. Throughout the play Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s guilt is demonstrated to us in many ways. Macbeth shows us guilt right away
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after he murders Duncan and returns with a bloody dagger in his hand and doesn’t know what to do with it, Lady Macbeth tells him to go place them back by the passed out guards but he says he would do no more. Lady Macbeth then takes the dagger back and places them by the guards. Macbeth then says, “ Whence is that knocking? How is’t with me, when every noise appals me? What hands are here? Ha, they pluck out mine eyes! Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.”(Macbeth Act II Scene II lines 73-79) This quote from Macbeth states that he is now beginning to feel the guilt of the decision he has made.
Lady Macbeth then answers by saying, “My hands are of your color, but I shame To wear a heart so white.”(Macbeth Act II Scene II lines 80-81) According to Cliffnotes.com, “Lady Macbeth shows her guilt towards the deaths of Duncan, Banquo, Lady Macduff and her family. Lady Macbeth’s guilty conscience is displayed near the end of the story when she is sleepwalking.”
Unlike persuasion, guilt usually affects the human body through the brain or mentally instead of physically. This can result in hallucinating or seeing things that aren't really there. We see this in Act III Scene 4 at the dinner table when Macbeth claims to see Banquo's ghost sitting in his seat. Lennox tells him to take a seat but he refuses and tells him the table is full and begins to speak towards the ghost. Lady Macbeth notices this and alerts the guest that he is just very tired and ask them to leave. We begin to see the guilt take over Lady Macbeth in Act V Scene 1 when she is so overcome with her role in the murdering of Duncan that the cannot rest and begins to sleepwalk. While she is sleepwalking another example of hallucinating occurs when she tries over and over to wash the blood off her hands but can't seem to get it off. At this point in the play both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are both guilty to the point where they are not mentally
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sane. Banquo who is Macbeth's cousin and best friend would have never imagined that his own family would turn evil on him.
Banquo has one son, Fleance, who is destined to be the next king. Macbeth proves that family doesn’t mean much to him when he meets with two murderers and sends them to kill Banquo and Fleance. While the two murderers are waiting to kill Banquo and his son, a mysterious third murderer comes onto the scene and will not reveal their name. Shakespeare keeps readers guessing at why and who this third murderer could be. There are many different theories of who is could be. Macbeth himself becomes a suspect and as well does Lady Macbeth. “Macbeth, by this time, was paranoid and was most definitely anxious to make sure that Banquo was killed.” (L.T Hollis,
shakespeare.nowheres.com) Persuasion and Guilt are two things that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth show readers throughout the play. Guilt is one of the main themes that Shakespeare gives an example of. The three witches give information to Macbeth that makes his wife power hungry and she soon rubs off on him. The word “Blood” is used over a hundred times in Macbeth. Blood is a representation of guilt in this play. The blood on their hands proves to be guilt when they both mention of how they cannot wash it off of their hands. No matter how hard they try, they cannot run from the guilt of the decisions that they made.
In the Shakespearian tragedy Macbeth, though Macbeth manages to murder the Scottish king Duncan to actualize the prophecy of the three witches, yet the guilt emanating from such nefarious acts and intentions continues to foreshadow Macbeth’s life throughout the plot. The very moment Macbeth approaches lady Macbeth with hands dipped in the blood of Duncan, his deeps seated guilt oozes forth as he says, “Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more;/Macbeth does murder sleep (2.2.45-46)”. Thereby, from this moment onwards, Macbeth is shown to be strongly stung by an unrelenting and continually nagging sense of guilt that makes him engage in strange and suspicion generating acts and manners. Yet, Macbeth time and again interprets his guilt as a sign of cowardice and moves on to spill more blood to consolidate his hold over an ill gotten throne. The torment and anguish inherent in these lines that are imbued with the seeds of guilt eventually metamorphose into a full blown sense of guilt and shame that continues to torment his soul.
The Importance of Guilt in Macbeth Through the story, guilt motivates Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to a great extent. Macbeth was a kind, fine nobleman of the king Duncan. But one day his benevolence and patronage to the king changed. He had met the three witches who had revealed the three prophecies. The first prophecy was that Macbeth would become the thane of Cawdor.
Guilt plays a strong role in motivating Macbeth, and causes Lady Macbeth to be driven over the edge of sanity - to her death. Throughout the story, there are many different types of guilty feelings that play a role in Macbeth’s fatal decisions and bring Lady Macbeth to commit suicide. Although there are many instances that show the power guilt has played on the main characters, there are three examples that show this the best. One is, just after the murder of the great King, Duncan. Guilt overcomes Macbeth where he can no longer think straight. A second example is soon after that, where all the guilt Macbeth feels at first, changes into hate after he decides that Banquo must be killed as well. The last example is just about at the end of the play, when we see Lady Macbeth sleepwalking, and then later committing suicide; this all because of the burden of her guilt. All of these examples build the proof that in this play, guilt plays a very large role in the characters’ lives.
Everyone knows the feeling. The nagging in the pit of your stomach that makes you rethink your actions. The feeling that makes you nervous, sweaty and scared. Guilt, an emotion that occurs when a person believes that they have violated a moral standard. Imagine a world without guilt. People would feel no remorse in anything they did, no conscience that monitored their actions. It is a powerful feeling that can both hold people back and push them towards action. This strong emotion is portrayed in several very popular pieces of literature. In the novel Macbeth, William Shakespeare shows how Macbeth’s guilt motivates him to make fatal decisions to try and hide his culpability, such as killing the king, killing Banquo and killing Macduff’s family.
Have you ever felt so terrible for something you did, or even felt awful before you even do that dangerous act? A part of the human nature is the very complex brain which gives humans the thought that they have done something wrong or are about to do something wrong. This is called your conscience and if you do not listen to it, very bad things can occur as a direct consequence. In the beginning of the play, Macbeth comes across as a hero and then turned into an absolute monster due to the inhumane acts that he takes to become the most powerful leader and hold that position. Art Markman from phychology.com defines the use of guilt. He says, “Guilt is a valuable emotion, because it helps to maintain your ties to the people in your community.”(Psychology.com)
Shakespeare? Guilt is defined as the fact or state of having offended someone or something. Guilt may cause a person to have trouble sleeping and difficulty in relationships with others. The effects of guilt tie into Macbeth with the theme of night
Lady Macbeth and Macbeth have both shown guilt, but at different stages in the play. Isolating guilty feelings only begins to isolate them from the world around them. Macbeth is the first to feel guilt at the begging of the play, but towards the end he has nothing but isolation. Lady Macbeth has both isolation and guilt. In act III , scene two , lines 6 to 9, Lady Macbeth says, " Noughts had all's spent, where our desire is got without content. Tis safer to be that which we destroy". She is describing how the murder of Duncan has made them lose everything but has made them gain nothing. Her guilt has gotten the best of her by act IV, when all she has on her mind is guilt. When Lady Macbeth says in act V. scene two, line 43 to 44, "Heres the smell of blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand". She knows the murder is irrevocable, and nothing can be done to erase the deed from her mind.
Throughout the play, Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, Macbeth continuously makes bad choices and the consequences of these decisions catch up to Macbeth and result in his mental deterioration, however with Macbeth’s almost infant feel for ambition this makes him susceptible to manipulation, which then grows into an insatiable appetite for power. The acts of this, with the manipulation from outsiders, causes his blind ambition, his false sense of security and then finally his guilt, which all contribute to his derangement. Some will argue that all the choices made by Macbeth were continuously his own, that he had these opportunities as a man to put his foot down and say no, and be able to draw the line where things should come to an end, the fault of a mental deterioration was not there, that from the beginning Macbeth was an evil man who had a twisted way of achieving things. Macbeth’s ambition is to remain king for as long as possible, and he will kill anybody who stops this from happening. Macbeth feels as if he was given a childless rule, and that his legacy will not continue on in fear his rule will be taken away by someone outside his family.
Everyone deals with guilt at least one time throughout their life, and several authors use guilt to help build up suspense in their story. Guilt in Macbeth not only affects his mental state of mind, but it also destroys him physically, along with a few other characters such as Lady Macbeth. The characters are affected by guilt so much, that it actually leads to their death essentially, just because they were not able to handle the consequences for the events that occurred. Despite being destroyed by guilt, they were still forced to carry on with their lives and they did have to try to hide it, even though Macbeth was not doing so well with that. His hallucinations were giving him up and eventually everyone knew the he had murdered Duncan so he could become the next king.
Macbeth would not have fulfilled his ambition if Lady Macbeth wasn’t there to encourage him. Macbeth feels intense guilt after committing the crime. Guilt has overcome Macbeth, so much so to where he can no longer think straight. Macbeth’s suffering shows how uncomfortable he feels after initiating such an atrocious decision just to look manly and to fulfill his ambitions.
Macbeth feels guilty that he is thinking about killing the King because he’s basing his entire thought upon belief in the ‘evil creatures’. We see this when Macbeth has a soliloquy in which he says, “Cannot be ill, cannot be good” and also asks himself why the thought of becoming King makes his “seated heart” knock against his ribs. Macbeth ‘sees’ a bloody dagger in front of him even before he kills the King. This shows that he feels guilty even before the evil deed. He tries to convince himself and his wife that he should not kill Duncan, and at one stage he orders her not to go any further with the deed....
In the end the readers can observe that Macbeth even being affected by guilt so many times in so many ways is still stronger than Lady Macbeth. He could survive the play without committing suicide because a feeling was controlling him. He had control over guilt, not completely, but largely. With the help of Lady Macbeth he continued with what he was predetermined to do, while Lady Macbeth could receive no help to stop her from going mad and committing suicide. You can control guilt, or guilt will drive you into madness.
In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, he chronicled the story of Macbeth’s rise to power and all he encountered during that journey. One theme that is present throughout the entirety of the play is guilt. As the story progressed, it can be seen that guilt affects each character differently depending on their role in the play. However, every person deals with the guilt in their own way. Everyone is influenced by a feeling of regret at some point in their lives, and the way they deal with it will affect them in the long run. It can be seen taking a drastic toll, particularly on the characters of Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth. Ultimately, the presence of guilt in someone is determined by how easily they let it affect them.
Macbeth is a fascinating story containing all kinds of plots and murders. The characters that are killing and are planning murders are all very deceiving and treacherous. Macbeth is guiltier because of these three main reasons; Macbeth kills the king, kills the guards, and he kills Banquo. Two of the most dangerous criminals in this play is Lady Macbeth and her husband, Macbeth. Together they committed one of the most dreadful murders by killing King Duncan. This is why it is difficult to determine which one of these two is guiltier because they each do their part in committing the crime. Lady Macbeth would prepare the plan and then manipulated Macbeth to go through with it. Macbeth was the one that committed the murder, and he was also the first person who thought about killing Duncan. Lady Macbeth did not have any involvement in these cases. Based on these ideas, Macbeth should be found more guilty than Lady Macbeth.
By embracing evil, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth have committed unnatural actions that disturb them. Their guilt does not leave them in peace, and slowly degrades their health. Macbeth's guilt causes him to act strangely in front of his guests, and it disturbs him deeply. Macbeth's guilt is deeply mutilated, and it only affects him when he hallucinates "Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves / Shall never tremble" (III.iv.124-125), and as soon as his visions disappear he feels better "Why so, being gone, / I am a man again.- Pray you sit still" (iii.iV.130-131), not something normal considering the actions he has committed. His guilt paralyzes him when he does feel it, but most of the time he is guiltless, and that encourages him to commit more murder. Although his guilt does not ultimately destroy him, it is a factor that brings his own men against him, since through his guilt he reveals the actions he has committed.