Macbeth Blood Motif Essay

After reading the book Macbeth, we found a lot of motifs from this book. However, there is only one motif that really impressed me--- "blood". As we know, from act 1, Macbeth's mind was directed by his ambition, from that on, his mind did not lead his body anymore. In order to achieve his goal--to be the king. He kept to kill more and more people. So the motif "blood" started to showing up since then.

So the first time that the motif "blood" shows up is in the Macbeth Act2. Macbeth use his knife and kill the King Duncan. Blood flowed out from Duncan's chest, Macbeth's hand was also colored by the blood. At this moment, he was so scared. But he knows clearly that there is no regret, there is no way back. He looked at his hand, the hopeless and the hopeful was shown up at the same time in his mind. "Blood on his hands" is the symbol of his ambition but also

the start of his killing.

And the second motif of "blood" is shown from Macbeth Act3.

Macbeth already became the king, and everything seems smoothly of his plan. However, Macbeth still can’t enjoy his life in the castle. Because he was always scared by the ghost of the king and Banquo. He knows that was unreal, but still, he just can’t avoid to see them. Thus, in the dinner, Macbeth saw Banquo’s ghost again. He was scared badly, and seems to be insane. However, in the end of this act, we can see that Macbeth and lady Macbeth hugged together. They were standing in a blood pool. Blood was so deep that was over their knees. Firstly, I was confused of this picture. But then, after I thought deeply, I found that this motif of blood has some connections with the first motif that I just mention. If we say the bloody hands were the begging of their killing, then the blood pool would be a kind of massacre. After kill the king, though his was scared, but he had to agreed that he felt a great honor to be the king. So the blood in the hall no only shows the people that he killed become more and more, but also a symbol of his expansive

ambition.

Then for the last motif of blood is the blood that flowed out from Macbeth neck when he was killed. That blood means the end of his empire. No matter what he have done, finally, his used his own blood to pay for them.

The last motif is also from the end of act5, these three motifs lead the story to keep going. They are the symbols of the starting, the climax and the end. And is shown by using the images and the dialogues. Just like MacDuff got the king back. Things that the writer want to tell us is that – we have to pay for what we did before, and no one can get away from that.