Examples Of Guilt In Macbeth

In Macbeth, as with all of plays, often are trying to make a point about the human psyche and how different people react differently to different situations. Macbeth, being a tragedy, deals with these ideas, but uses certain techniques to help the audience better sympathise, and to better show Macbeth’s dark descent downwards. Guilt, ambition and the influence of the supernatural all use an array of techniques to help the audience fully understand the concepts and messages Shakespeare was trying to push through this play.

Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s internal struggle with guilt is further underpinned in the play by the use of various techniques. One such example is the use of symbolism, specifically blood. After Macbeth has murdered the king Duncan, he immediately starts to feel the regret and guilt. This is first

This is shown to the audience through the use of asides and soliloquys, which detail the characters inner thoughts. One very early example of this ambition is in Macbeth’s aside “The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step on which I must fall down, or else o’erleap…”, which outlines Macbeth’s plan to take the throne from the heir Malcom. However, it is not as though Macbeth does not know his own ambition. In Act 1, Scene 7, at the end of his soliloquy, he adds “I have no spur… and falls on the other”. This identifies Macbeths strong ambition, but his lack of a “spur”, which is made to be likened to a horse, with the spur being his motivation. Lady Macbeth answers this in the same scene with a monologue in lines 47-58 which describes just how far she is willing to go just to achieve her and Macbeths goals. These two pieces of dialogue help the reader know their goals and the lengths to which each character would go to achieve it. They do this as they are techniques used to help the audience better understand a character and their