The undoing of the most powerful couple in Scotland did not begin on a battlefield; it began when fear started governing their lives and rotting their sanity. Once full of ambition and resolve, they seemed untouchable, but as the lies became more complex, the facade started to crumble. They embodied betrayal, yet feared it in everyone else for they knew what could lie beneath the surface. The Macbeth’s were ruthless in their rise to power, not stopping to consider the repercussions. The emotions that they repressed began building up causing their minds to break down. The Macbeth’s mental deterioration was derived from the inescapable paranoia that followed endless betrayal. Macbeth spared no expense in ridding himself of his enemies, yet he …show more content…
He confesses to his wife that he thought he heard a voice cry, “sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep” (Shakespeare 28). The paranoia is already beginning to set in as he is hearing things and jumps at every noise. More significantly than that, though, is the idea of murdering sleep. The idea of sleep can be taken in both a literal and a figurative sense, which gives it a powerful double meaning. Figuratively, sleep represents purity and vulnerability, and by completing the murder, Macbeth is killing those things within himself. He will never again be innocent as he is stained by his actions like the blood that stains his hands. This corruption of his morals sinks in and he begins to be haunted by nightmares, denying him sleep in a literal sense. Macbeth’s greatest fear is his friend Banquo. Banquo is a foil for Macbeth, so Macbeth fears that Banquo will start to follow the same murderous path that he did, and that he will be caught in the crossfire. Banquo was once Macbeth’s fellow warrior and closest friend, but as the paranoia of being overthrown begins rotting his mind, he becomes obsessively afraid him. He knows that Banquo understands him, that terrifies him more than anything. When the weird sisters show Macbeth an apparition