Macbeth is a dark play written by Shakespeare. It is about a kingdom in Scotland in which the people living there turn on each other and don't know who to trust. Macbeth changes from an innocent man to a murderous villain. In the end, his cockiness will get the best of him. Throughout the play Macbeth, Shakespeare uses many literary devices to convey the theme, “guilt cannot be washed away.” The devices he uses are symbolism and foreshadowing. In the play, blood is represented by guilt. After Macbeth kills the king, he says, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No. This my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red” (Shakespeare 57). He knows now that the crime he has committed was horrible, and the guilt cannot be washed away. Blood works so well as a symbol to represent guilt because it sticks to the readers’ mind as something that stains the hands. Not only is blood symbolized, but so is …show more content…
In act 1, Macbeth meets the witches and they tell him that he will become Thane of Cawdor, and later the King of Scotland. This is explained in this quote; “All hail Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis! All hail Macbeth! Hail to the, Thane of Cawdor! All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!” (Shakespeare, 19) When Macbeth tells his wife, Lady Macbeth, she wants Macbeth to kill King Duncan. Lady Macbeth is eager for Macbeth to rise to power. When she confronts him about this, it starts the downward spiral of unfortunate events that makes Macbeth a cynical person. When he kills the king, he starts to feel remorse for what he did. During the play, he says, “Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor” (Shakespeare 41). Macbeth is explaining how once something bad is done, the guilt will always be with the person who committed it. This foreshadows the theme that guilt cannot be washed