Soliloquies of Shakespeare's Macbeth

1415 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Cricticlly discuss how actions have consequences as seen in Macbeth

Macbeth- Soliloquy Analysis

The opposition of light and dark as symbols for life and death is the foundation upon which much of Shakesphere’s Macbeth is built. In Act V Scene V of Macbeth, strong words covey all of these thoughts to the reader. The tone for Macbeth’s speech is immediately set after hearing of the death of Lady Macbeth. Having lost his queen, and seeing his hopes turn to ashes, the bitter Macbeth now comments on life in caustic words. “Tomorrow creeps in this petty pace.” The basic feel of this brings a negative connotation to tomorrow. Iit keeps coming slowly and slyly as if to attack. What exactly does this petty pace refer to? It is the progression of life, as Macbeth now sees it. This negative and dark imagery continues to grow because tomorrow is unrelenting. “[T]ommorow creeps...To the last syllable of recorded time.” With these dreary remarks Macbeth presents his hopeless outlook. He feels the only way to end the pain of life is through death. “And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death.” What can be taken from this is that from our earliest recollection, we are constantly being guided forward from yesterday to our death. If light is life, then the light just leads us to death. When these lines are read together it enables the reader to see the despair and agony Macbeth is now suffering. The past is pushing him ahead and the future is creeping in on him. He has nowhere in time or space to escape. Death is the only place left to go. “Out, out brief candle!” Lady Macbeth’s candle has burnt out and soon his will also. Although he talks here about life being light (the candle flame), light is not desirable to him. He wants to extinguish it. Macbeth is at the point in his life where he is now trapped by his fate. The consequences of his actions have caught up with him. This may very well be why he has such a dreary outlook on life. Life is associated with light but Macbeth is at a state where he sees no significance in having lived. “ Life’s but a walking shadow.” Macbeth is saying here that one’s life is dark and dreary, and that the light of life only serves to cast a dark shadow .

Show More
Related

  • Time Motifs In Shakespeare's Macbeth

    797 Words  | 2 Pages

    Lady Macbeth has just died and Macbeth himself is realizing a fair amount of truths. “She should have died hereafter; / There would have been a time for such a world. / Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day … Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury” (ln 17-27). Macbeth had mocked time and attempted to outrace it, which ends up slowing him down. He has become fully aware that his life is worthless, and now he has lost his wife. Macbeth also recognizes that it would have been better if Lady Macbeth had died at some other time because her death made everything worse. This time motif is the height of Macbeth’s realization of where his life has gone. Duncan, Banquo, and now his wife are dead. He believed that taking the throne was all he needed, but it left him with the opposite. This motif is effective because even though Macbeth is still living in some alternate reality of time, he is slowly coming out of that after the death of his wife. Macbeth is now numb and feels

    Read More

  • Examples Of The 7 Deadly Sins In Macbeth

    1154 Words  | 3 Pages

    ). Macbeth realises that his life is an illusion and that he has been blinded by his pride. He uses a metaphor to conclude that life is short, like an actor that doesn’t have enough time on stage, and that in reality he is just an idiot who has created noise and destruction all for it to amount to nothing. He disrupted the kingdom, killed his friends and became paranoid only to be left to the company of pride, greed and wrath. In Macbeth’s remarkable last words “ “I will not yield,/ To kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet,/ And to be baited with the rabble’s curse./ Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane,/ And thou opposed, being of no woman born,/ Yet I will

    Read More

  • Crime Trends: Gilbert, Arizona

    567 Words  | 2 Pages

    Location, Inc. (2014). Gilbert AZ crime rates and statistics - NeighborhoodScout. Retrieved February 25, 2014, from http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/az/gilbert/crime/

    Read More

  • The Unladylike Lady in Macbeth

    3064 Words  | 7 Pages

    I do not need to remind you of the great scenes preceding the murder, in which Macbeth and his Lady pull themselves together for their desperate effort. If you think over these scenes, you will notice that the Macbeths understand the action which begins here as a competition and a stunt, against reason and against nature. Lady Macbeth fears her husband's human nature, as well as her own female nature, and therefore she fears the light of reason and the common dayllight world. As for Macbeth, he knows from the first that he is engaged in an irrational stunt: "I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself / And falls on the other." In this sequence there is also the theme of outwitting or transcending time, an aspect of nature's order as we know it: catching up the consequences, jumping the life to come, and the like.

    Read More

  • Macbeth Tragic Hero Quotes

    921 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Disdaining fortune; with his brandished steel which smoked with bloody execution like valor’s minion carved out his passage till’ he faced the slave” (I.ii.17-20). This quote shows Macbeth's insane determination to achieving his goals. A major problem with this is that he sometimes has too much ambition. Near the end of the play, Macbeth's flaw finally catches up to him as Macduff executes him. “Yell I will try the last. Before my body I throw my warlike shield: lay on, Macduff, and damned be him that first cries ‘Hold, Enough’” (V.vii.61-63). In this quote it shows that the tragic hero Macbeth will never give up for what he believes in. His beastly determination to succeed every challenge he is turn upon leads him to this point. “And wish the’state o’th’ world were now undone. Ring the alarm bell! Blow, wind! Come, wrack! At least we’ll die with harness on our back!” (V.v.50-52). Not only is he accepting defeat here, he is also accepting death. These series of quotes show Macbeth's true courage and that he is a warrior till' the end, and nothing can modify

    Read More

  • Interior Monologue on Lady Macbeth

    749 Words  | 2 Pages

    First came the pride, an overwhelming sense of achievement, an accomplishment due to great ambition, but slowly and enduringly surged a world of guilt and confusion, the conscience which I once thought diminished, began to grow, soon defeating the title and its rewards. Slowly the unforgotten memories from that merciless night overcame me and I succumbed to the incessant and horrific images, the bloody dagger, a lifeless corpse. I wash, I scrub, I tear at the flesh on my hands, trying desperately to cleanse myself of the blood. But the filthy witness remains, stained, never to be removed.

    Read More

  • Macbeth Figurative Language Analysis

    466 Words  | 1 Pages

    Macbeth’s attitude changes dramatically from feeling guilty, at the beginning, to being a vivacious tyrant, at the end. Macbeth starts a trend of murdering his citizens because of paranoia and continues to make his country, Scotland, much worst. Ross speaks out about what is going on in Scotland and says “Alas, poor country, almost afraid to know itself. It cannot Be called our mother, but our grave, where nothing But who knows nothing is once seen to smile. Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rent the air Are made, not marked.” (iv.iii.164-169) Ross explains that Macbeth is killing so many people that the country is frightened and is no longer a dominant country. Ross also says that all citizens are sad and the streets are filled with screams. Ross continues to say Scotland is so bad that people’s lives are so short. Ross claims “The dead man’s knell there scarce asked for who, and good men’s lives Expire before the flowers in their caps, Dying or ere they sicken.” (iv.iii.170-175) Ross says Macbeth’s causing people to die before a flower can die. This figurative language shows how relatively quick

    Read More

  • The Equal Pay Act: a Failure?

    780 Words  | 2 Pages

    Guarino, Mark. "Gender Pay Gap: GM Defends Compensation Package for CEO Mary Barra (Video)." The Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor, 11 Feb. 2014. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.

    Read More

  • The Themes of Macbeth

    996 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of the most important themes in Macbeth involves the witches' statement in Act 1, Scene1 that "fair is foul and foul is fair." (Act 1, Scene 1, Line 10) This phrase aptly describes the macabre status quo within the character Macbeth and without.  When Macbeth and Banquo first see the weird sisters, Banquo is horrified by their hideous appearances.  Conversely, Macbeth immediately began to converse with these universally known evil creatures.  After hearing their prophecies, one can say that Macbeth considered the witches to be "fair" when in reality their intentions were quite "foul." Macbeth's possession of the titles of Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor and King of Scotland came by foul means.  Macbeth became the Thane of Glamis by his father Sinel's death; he became Thane of Cawdor when the former namesake was executed for treason; and he was ordained King of Scotland after murdering the venerable Duncan.  Thus, Macbeth has a rather ghastly way of advancing in life.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Corruption In Macbeth

    829 Words  | 2 Pages

    The tone of Macbeth is dark and ominous and it is used to arouse feeling within the audience, which prognosticates the destruction to be brought upon by the protagonist’s immoral ambitions. The dialogue by Macbeth, “Blood will have blood,”(3, Ⅳ) stirs sinister feelings among the audience, which foreshadows the continuous bloodshed yet to happen due to him and Lady Macbeth in their attempt to further secure their dominance. When Hecate vows to ruin Macbeth, stating how “security/ Is mortals’ chiefest enemy,” the audience is indicated of the fatal end that awaits Macbeth’s excessive confidence and ambition. As Macbeth tells Lady Macbeth, “Sleep no more,” it indicates not only sleepless nights but its foreboding tone has a deeper meaning conveying the consequences that are expected for the sin he has committed. Thus, the tone of Macbeth was an effective literary device employed by Shakespeare to communicate this particular

    Read More

  • Child Marriage in the Middle East

    1393 Words  | 3 Pages

    Overall, the evidence is overwhelming in favor of restricting the age of marriage in the Middle East to eighteen, an age where women along with men are mature and rational in choosing whether to marry, and if choosing marriage, who they wish to be wed; even though the Islamic religious standpoint argues.

    Read More

  • Soliloquy Essay - Soliloquies of Shakespeare's Macbeth

    1075 Words  | 3 Pages

    Macbeth’s fortunes in the end leaves the audience filled not with pity, but also awe, at the realization that

    Read More

  • Macbeth Ambition Essay

    1052 Words  | 3 Pages

    Macbeth compares life to a “brief candle”. Life is short and spontaneous, and suddenly, it can go into complete darkness, disregarding how bright and happy it is. Macbeth comes to the realization that his ambition to become king would be meaningless in this context. His hallucinations start to progress the more he realizes how sinister it was of him to murder his own king. The first part of his hallucinations starts when he sees a bloody dagger before him.

    Read More

  • Theories of Dream Content in The Interpretation of Dreams by Freud

    1441 Words  | 3 Pages

    I chose this book to explore whether our dreams do mean anything, and whether it does symbolise and influence our past and future. The points that I will be talking about The Interpretation of Dreams in my review is the theories of manifest and latent dream content, dreams as wish fulfilments, and the significance of childhood experiences.

    Read More

  • Describe The History Of Volleyball

    1003 Words  | 3 Pages

    The sport of volleyball was created in 1895 by William G. Morgan. He was the Director of Physical Education of the YMCA of Massachusetts. William Morgan was born in the state of New York and studied at Springfield College, Massachusetts. According to Bellis (2014), “Ironically at Springfield, Morgan met James Naismith who invented basketball in 1891. Naismith’s game of basketball was inspiration for Mr. Morgan to formulate the game of volleyball.”

    Read More

More about Soliloquies of Shakespeare's Macbeth

Open Document