Sleeplessness And Greed Quotes In Macbeth

Elier Meraz Barrera

English

11/3/14

Sleeplessness & Guilt

“So I’ll ask you a question, if your life were the prize, would you kill the innocent? Would you sacrifice your humanity? Would you do the unthinkable, for your own gain? We all make choices, but in the end, our choices make us”, that’s what Andrew Ryan’s believed. In the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare there is betrayal, murder and lust for power. Where a noble, honorable man losses his morality. Where a woman’s greed drives her to make rash decision eventually driving her insane. Guilt in some cases can be worse than death.

The main character of the play is named Macbeth. Macbeth is a dynamic character; he starts off as the protagonist and turns antagonist. For his selfish gain he plots to kill

the king he can’t sleep because of his devilish thoughts.

He starts to imagine things, when he’s alone he’s debating if he should kill the king, he imagines a bloody dagger in fount of him he reacts by saying “is this a dagger I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee: I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight?”(2.1.33-37), Is a direct result of lack of sleeping which is making him see things that aren’t actually there. Ones he kills Duncan and takes his throne. He makes the rash decision to kill Banquo. Once he kills banquo he sees him he “ prithee, see there! Behold, look, lo! How say you? Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too. If charnel houses and our graves must send those that we bury back, our monuments shall be the news of kites”(3.4.69-73) he says once he see the ghost of

Banquo, once again because of his lack of sleep, but also because he feels guilty of killing his best friend. He even says that its better to be dead than to be alive “Better be with the dead whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace, than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave. After life fitful fever, he sleeps well”(3.2.19-23) All of this is foretold by the three witches “I’ll drain him dry as hay: sleep shall neither night nor day hang upon his penthouse lid; He shall live a man forbid” (1.3.17-19), it could be the reason of Macbeths rash choices.
The wife of Macbeth deals the same issue sleep deprivation and guilt. She almost acts like the bad subconscious for Macbeth. Persuading him to make bad choices regardless of morality. She’s the one that plans to kill the king. At first he acts like a “MAN” but than she makes a turn for the worst and goes crazy. She sleep walks whale trying to wash her hand from the blood of the king, and she kills her self “ The queen, my lord, is dead”(5.5.16) Seyton says to Macbeth.
I feel like this story has been told dozens of time. A man full of greed and lust will do anything it takes to gain it. It only goes to show you that one mans desire will end him.