Guilty Conscience In Macbeth

The play, The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare is about guilt and having a guilty conscience and reveals how one goes mad with guilt when they’ve done something they regret. All of Macbeth's guilt starts to soften his drive to becoming king. After he kills Duncan (his first step of becoming king) he gets guilty, and then paranoid. Act 2, Scene 2 is when we start to see Macbeth’s paranoia about killing Duncan. His paranoia is so bad he jumps at every noise, “How is’t with me, when every noise appals me?” (2.2.56). After Macbeth has done the deed of killing Duncan, he tells Lady Macbeth about what happened after. He says, “One cried, ‘God bless us!’ and ‘Amen,’ the other, as they had seen me with these hangman’s hands. List’ning their

fear, I could not say ‘Amen,’ when they did say, ‘God bless us.’”(2.2.24-27). When Lady Macbeth returns to the scene of the murder to smear the grooms with blood, Macbeth looks at his hands and thinks that all the blood on them will turn the ocean red. After this, when he hears a knocking on the door he states, “Wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst.” (2.2.72). He wishes he did not commit this crime, and that something so simple as knocking could just wake Duncan up, or reverse what he did.