Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Macbeth character analysis
Psycho analysis of lady macbeth
Lady Macbeth characterization
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Whether you like it or not we all have done some things we are pretty guilty of. I'm sure reading that first sentence a thought already came to your head that you cringed at. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Lady Macbeth deals with some pretty heavy guilt after her husband's killing of the King Duncan. Lady Macbeth feels so guilty she can't even sleep in the dark anymore out of fear of someone coming to get revenge on her. Every night she has a candle lit room when she goes to sleep and sleep washes her hands aggressively before she lays back down. Her gentlewoman finds her behaviors so strange and unusual so she goes on to call a doctor to see what's going on. “‘Out damned spot, out, I say! One. Two. Why then, ‘this time to do ‘t. Hell is murky.
Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeared? What need we fear account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?’” (Shakespeare 5.1, 163) Lady Macbeth is so guilty she's even confessing her murder to the king in her sleep, scrubbing her hands to make sure every spot is gone, but there is no blood there. Leaving my trash bag outside the garage rather than the garbage can and having the raccoons get into it is a lot different than murdering a man, but the feeling of guilt still is present within both of those actions that will haunt the both of us today. I may not have confessed it was me who left the trash bag, but I've felt so terrible I've come pretty close to it. Unlike Lady Macbeth I'm aware of myself almost confessing my action I still am guilty of, but the feeling still remains.
The play Macbeth and the movie The Social Network each explore ideas around guilt and remorse. Both these works are from two different timelines and explore two completely different themes and ideas, but are both relatively similar in scope. Macbeth and The Social Network explore ideas around guilt and remorse, but at opposing angles. Both works depict the main character as someone who is easily influenced and who is driven by ambition, both capable and not capable of feeling guilt and remorse. Their ambitions cause those close to them to break ties, and their relationships deteriorate as they betray those closest to them while trying to attain what others have by any means possible.
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.
Thirdly, feelings of paranoia and guilt cause Macbeth characters to make damaging choices. When Macbeth asks the witches to reveal the truth of their prophecies to him, they summon horrible apparitions, each of which offers a prediction to allay Macbeth’s fears. First, a floating head warns him to beware Macduff. Macbeth says that he has already guessed as much. Later when Lennox enters and tells Macbeth that Macduff has fled to England. Macbeth in reply says, “The castle of Macduff I will surprise; / Seize upon Fife; give to th'edge o'th'sword / His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls / That trace him in his line.” (4.1.149-152). As Macbeth descends to madness he becomes obsessed with eliminating any threats to his power. Macbeth orders the murderers to kill Macduff's family and eliminate any threat to him. Ironically, this is the moment that Macbeth seals his own fate, by murdering Macduff's family he ensures Macduff's retaliation against him, which ultimately leads
Lady Macbeth: “Out damned spot: out I say.” (5.1.30). Lady Macbeth once thought that she would be able to wash herself clean of the horrors she once committed. This is not possible, for she is so full of guilt that now her hands are completely covered in blood.
The most important emotions that we see in Macbeth are ambition, remorse, and fear. They are significant because they provoke Macbeth to do evil and cruel things. Ambition takes control of him earlier in the play when the witches tell him he is going to be king. After he already has done the deed, killed Duncan, he is remorseful for his actions. Out of fear for himself, Macbeth murdered Macduff’s family and killed Banquo.
In Macbeth, there are a lot of guilt and regrets felt by Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth. For example, Macbeth regrets killing King Duncan because now he is worried that if the people find out it was him, he would be executed. Also Macbeth starts to feel guilty about the people who he killed, but he likes to do it because he wants to be king. Lady Macbeth is starting to become worried about the people trying to come after for what she is encouraging Macbeth to do. Macbeth, a man driven by ambition, could not escape from guilt which haunted him.
High school students around the globe are still continuously studying one of Shakespeare’s most preeminent tragic and eventful plays, Macbeth. Macbeth is a well-known play,which incorporates several themes such as culpability, destructiveness, murderousness, ambition, and prepotency. In this play, we learned that Macbeth encounters three mystifying women who forespeak his future and those predictions turn out to be true. The prediction of him becoming a king engaged him on wanting to eradicate King Duncan. So do you think Macbeth will want to wait or want to make these predictions come to be true?
A person’s guilt will eventually manifest itself on its own terms. For most people, guilt is a hard psychological experience. Thus, the effects can be very diverse. In the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, the effects of guilt and having a guilty conscience is a recurring theme displayed throughout the text. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, the two characters Shakespeare reveal to be most evil, experience an abundance of guilt and its unwanted side effects. Through the characters’ dialogue and soliloquies, the reader can pinpoint exact moments where guilt is unmissable. Shakespeare’s Macbeth clearly demonstrates how guilt can affect one’s actions, and it uses the concept to develop one of the many themes of the play.
In Shakespeare’s Macbeth the theme of guilt and conscience is one of the most prominent in the play. It gives life to the play and gives depth to the characters, it makes Macbeth a much more realistic character because we are shown that he is not perfect and still responds to temptation. The results of committing evil acts have such a powerful effect on the human mind, that it is eventually destroyed by it. Macbeth’s destroyed mind is evident when he states, “O full of scorpions is my mind dear wife!”. Macbeth and his wife, like all of us must live with our own actions; unfortunately his choices make this impossible and light the way to a tragic and dusty death for the Macbeths.
“But I will bury him, and if I must die, I say that this crime is holy”. Lady Macbeth, however, feels guilty. She feels so much that she ends up going mad because of it, and after that, committing suicide from it. She began to realize how horrible her actions and thoughts were, and her mind took over as she slipped under and became insane. “Nought’s had, all’s spent, Where our desire is got without content; ‘Tis safer to be that which we destroy Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.”
There are times in life where we choose between right or wrong. It can come into effect on how other people judge you based on their views of what's right or what's wrong. In the play Macbeth, William Shakespeare displayed a darker and a wrong side of humankind. Three main characters, in particular, showed similar traits of greediness. Banquo, who appears to be noble fails to resist his desires; Lady Macbeth overrules herself with greed to a fate of anguish. And finally, Macbeth becomes engulfed with greed that leads to horrible deeds. Shakespeare emphasizes that desire for power and wealth can overrule morality in human nature.
There's a lot of motif in the story “Macbeth.” In Macbeth blood symbolizes bravery to guilt and shame. Lady Macbeth asked Macbeth why he brought the bloody daggers with him and tell him that “they must lie there; go carry them and smear them the sleepy grooms with blood.” Macbeth is being a baby and not wanting to finish what him and lady Macbeth had planned. That's when lady Macbeth steps up and takes the daggers from Macbeth and finished everything. The Macbeth's puts the murder on someone else,they make it seem like they didn't do it. That quote represents wrong doing and the guilt of
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?
A man destined to be powerful kills his closest friend, why? Because he knows too much. The story of Macbeth starts with a prophecy pronouncing him as the future king. He will do whatever it takes to be just that, and with his wife and his title, he expects his life to be stupendous. In the Story of Macbeth-- written by Shakespeare—Macbeth and Lady Macbeth struggle for power, through twists and turns they soon realize what they’ve done, but they’re already too far in to back out now. Although Macbeth did awful things, readers can sympathize with Macbeth due to the pressure put upon him by Lady Macbeth, the weird sisters and his own guilt.
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.