Guilt In Macbeth

Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, is a tragedy that centers around the Scottish general Macbeth and his journey as his ambition leads to his own destruction. Macbeth is told by three powerful witches that he is destined to be the King of Scotland. Macbeth enters this interaction skeptically until two of his three prophecies come true. It is at this point, Macbeth decides to take his destiny into his own hands and propel himself to become king. Macbeth, and his wife, Lady Macbeth, come up with a plan to murder the current king and in Macbeth’s soliloquy from Act 2 scene 1, he shows guilt about his plan to kill King Duncan. In the end, Macbeth’s ambition and longing for power outweigh his guilt and conscience as he carries out the rest of the plan.

As a result, he overanalyzes the visions and hallucinations he gets, hoping they will give him some closure or make a decision for him. He will fault anyone but himself for his actions because he feels guilty about them. This is the reason he lets Lady Macbeth manipulate him so easily and with such little resistance. Macbeth's vision of the dagger in this scene is his own, which means he can manipulate it to do whatever he wants and he can interpret it however he wants. This means when the vision was the “instrument I was to use”(Shakespeare 2.1.55) and the dagger was “marshal’st me the way that I was going”(2.1.54) Macbeth was manipulating his vision because he wanted to see the dagger moving towards Duncan's room. Macbeth does not want to feel guilty for his action of murdering Duncan so he, by interpreting the dagger as moving towards Duncan, can use the vision can take the blame for his “deeds too cold breath gives”(2.1.74). According to Macbeth his murdering Duncan is now no longer his fault, the vision is at fault because it told him to do it. The way Macbeth interprets these visions and hallucinations is due to his ambition. While he does feel tremendous guilt for everything he does his ambition outweighs it. That is why he finds ways to avoid blaming himself so he can still gain all his power without the weight of his conscience. The

Macbeth believes he is going to need the “stealthy pace”(Shakespeare 2.1.66) of a wolf and then he asks to have “Tarquin’s ravishing [strides,] towards his design”(2.1.67). Tarquin is the main character in Shakespeare's narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece. The poem is the story of a roman soldier, Tarquin, taking advantage of his friend's wife, Lucrece. In the poem, Tarquin goes to Lucrece’s house and has an internal conflict about what he should do. He ends up blaming Collatine for being the “publisher of that rich jewel he should keep unknown”(The Rape of Lucrece 84-85). This deflection of blame from Tarquin toward his friend is the exact reaction that Macbeth has toward his vision of the dagger. In the end, Tarquin is overcome with his lust for Lucrece and goes into her room. In the end, Tarquin's ambition got the better of him and he did the morally wrong thing, similar to how Macbeth chose the morally wrong option by Duncan. When Lucerne wakes he threatens to kill her and frame her for adultery if she does not agree to be disloyal to her husband. After the assault, Lucrece is struck with unbearable guilt at what she was forced to do and sends a letter to her husband with the truth of what happened with Tarquin then she stabs herself with a knife. After Lucrece’s death, Tarquin becomes narcissistic and confident