ipl-logo

Macbeth's Desire And Insanity

545 Words3 Pages

Macbeth talks about the darkness of his plan to murder, and he personifies nature as a living creature that is dead and all living things are in deep sleep. Furthermore, Macbeth proclaims that dreams are wicked and that they abuse sleep. This can be interpreted as the supernatural forces are guiding his dream of being successful and his ambition leads him to kill King Duncan in his sleep. Even though Macbeth recognizes all his flaws and sins by following the wrong path, he talks about the darkness of his crime and the night. It does not affect him yet it proves that the darkness of Macbeth’s desire and insanity contributes to his downfall.

When Macbeth begins to hallucinate and sees a floating dagger in front of him. Rather than seeing the dagger as a sign to stop himself from murdering the …show more content…

This can be seen as Macbeth’s attempt to justify his choice in murdering the king. In addition, this decision displays how Macbeth’s lust and greed for the throne push him over the brink of insanity. This is proven as he sees the weapon as “a dagger of the mind, [and] a false creation; / proceeding from [his] heat-oppressed brain” (2.1.38-39).

Throughout the play, Macbeth, masculinity and feminity are different than the typical gender roles of the 11th century. According to Greig E. Henderson and Christopher Brown’s Feminist criticism, people stereotype males as active, dominating, and rational, whereas the female is passive, submissive, and emotional. In Act II Scene I of the play, one can learn that the role of Lady Macbeth and the three witches has a great impact on Macbeth's actions and his masculinity. Firstly, Macbeth says that “wicked dreams abuse the curtain'd sleepe” (2.1.51-52). When you comprehend this quote literally, one may think Macbeth would kill the King in his sleep and his act is the wicked dream. However, this quote also

Show More
Related
1724 Words | 7 Pages

The voices he hears that threaten: “Macbeth shall sleep no more” indicate a relationship between guilt and madness. Therefore, the manifestation of the dagger suggests that he feels guilty because of his attempt to murder Duncan. There are three major transitions of thought. First, he contemplates about the dagger’s existence; the second is the invocations of dark images; finally, there is the bell that cuts off Macbeth’s contemplations. The transitions between topics indicate that while Macbeth feels guilty for the murder, his determination makes him ignore

Read More
1980 Words | 8 Pages

This stage direction is after Macbeth has murdered Duncan. " Daggers" are often seen as ruthless cutthroat weapons, designated for secretive, stealthy assassination plots because it has a convenient size, in comparison to the sword, which is harder to hide. Furthermore, a "dagger" can also symbolise death, defiance, ambition, betrayal, fearlessness, danger and intimidation. One of the dagger was used to symbolise Macbeth, and the other is Lady Macbeth, because once the "dagger" was used, it would need to be discarded so that they will not be caught. In other words, they did it in their own will, and murdering Duncan can be seen as throwing their own sanity away.

Read More
321 Words | 2 Pages

By speaking directly to the dagger Macbeth clutches in his hand, the author creates an apostrophe. Using powerful diction such as “clutch”, “fatal”, and “false” the author is able to make a hesitant, surreal, and eerily sinister tone. Macbeth is portrayed to be uncertain, yet sure, ready, yet unprepared, and willing, yet hesitant to murder the beloved King Duncan. This helps see how devoted Macbeth is to Duncan, yet how far he is willing to go in order to be king. It also emphasizes the reason why Macbeth is seen as a tragedy since his ambition, the desire to become king, leads him to his ultimate demise.

Read More
521 Words | 3 Pages

Macbeth would envision a dagger before him asking himself “is (that) a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand”(act.2 scene.i). The dagger was a metaphor for his ambitions and motivation to make himself king with the help of his wife, Lady Macbeth. After King Duncan was killed, Macbeth felt he was evil at that point where he “belief(ed) he (was) to evil to blessed by god”(act.2 scene.ii). The guilt he felt would drive him to the point of madness and brought into question if he was human after that or something that could not be redeemed.

Read More
975 Words | 4 Pages

Macbeth, written by William Shakespeare, is a play that mainly focuses on one common theme of insanity. Macbeth gradually becomes plagued by intense guilt as his desire for power drives him to attain his goals by any means necessary, including committing murder. He kills Duncan in cold blood in order to become King, has Banquo killed by three murderers because he wishes to maintain his position as King, and finally, he has Macduff’s family slaughtered. Each of these occurrences takes place because of Macbeth’s will to be King, or they are a result of his guilt. Nonetheless, they are all completed of his free will, which is what causes him to deteriorate mentally.

Read More
936 Words | 4 Pages

A Guilty Conscience: How Guilt Drives the Powerful to Insanity Guilt is the cause of the destruction of many, particularly in Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Macbeth. As Macbeth and Lady Macbeth continue to murder for the sake of power, they embark on opposite journeys but their guilt ultimately drives them both to insanity. Macbeth goes from being driven mad with guilt, to his instability causing him to murder recklessly. His wife goes from expressing no compassion or guilt to her guilt overcoming her and driving her to madness.

Read More
619 Words | 3 Pages

Macbeth begins to go insane after he murders King Duncan at the beginning of the play. Although he did it for a gain of power, he still feels very guilty. Macbeth starts saying weird things about what he heard, “Methought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more!” to all the house. “Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more.

Read More
1099 Words | 5 Pages

At the beginning of the soliloquy, Macbeth is characterized as a thinker, not quite sure if his choice of action is correct. Shakespeare demonstrates this trait in the first third of his soliloquy, up until he draws his dagger. This third consists of a collection of questions to the dagger that appears in front of him. While being rhetorical, these questions create the sense that Macbeth is not sure of himself or what he wants to do. He is not yet convinced thoroughly that he is going to commit the murder, as he has moments of respite in between seeing the dagger and questioning its reality.

Read More
1134 Words | 5 Pages

Mental Stability in Macbeth As Erma Bombeck once said, “Guilt: is the gift that keeps on giving” (“A Quote by Erma Bombeck”). In Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, guilt plays an enormous role in the development of Macbeth’s descent into madness. Macbeth is about Macbeth being persuaded by Lady Macbeth into committing heinous crimes, and it all started when Macbeth tells her about premonitions three witches gave him. In pursuit of making those premonitions come true, Macbeth kills King Duncan, which scares his children, Malcolm and Donalbain out of the country, allowing Macbeth to become King.

Read More
556 Words | 3 Pages

We observe Macbeth make choices that in a way that fractures his soul. The first way is obvious; Macbeth begins to give into the temptation and deception of power and his wife’s wishes to kill the king. Macbeth struggles with visions of a dagger, a dagger that he later uses to kill the King. His mind begins to collapse upon the thought, his soul trembles. This is a test for the story whether he has the temerity to kill, and he does.

Read More
1145 Words | 5 Pages

Shakespeare engineered a most impressionable character in Macbeth who easily succumbs to the extensive magnitude of opposing constraints. This character is Macbeth, who is the protagonist in the play and husband to a conniving wife, who in the end is the sole cause for Macbeth 's undoing. Conflicting forces in the play compel internal conflicts within Macbeth to thrive on his contentment and sanity as he his torn asunder between devotion, aspiration, morality and his very own being. He has developed a great sense of loyalty from being a brave soldier; however, his ambition soon challenges this allegiance. As his sincerity begins to deteriorate, his own sanity starts to disintegrate until the point where he cannot differentiate between reality

Read More
434 Words | 2 Pages

In this time a man’s masculinity was all that he had and for someone to question it would have almost forced the man to prove himself. In the twenty first century this same idea of being a masculine man still exist. If someone questions a man’s masculinity they most often seek to prove them wrong or prove that they are hyper masculine. In reality Macbeth had no choice to be aggressive because aggression and violence are what identified someone as being a true man, without these traits Macbeth would have been demasculinized. His pride, self-worth, and ambition would not allow that to happen, therefore, to prove himself as a man he killed his friends to meet his own self desires and ended up paying the price for his ambitious

Read More
1013 Words | 5 Pages

Unlike Lady Macbeth, Macbeth felt guilty before he murdered King Duncan. Macbeth begins to have second thoughts about whether he wants to go on and murder King Duncan. On his way to murder King Duncan, Macbeth has the vision of the bloody dagger leading the way. While he realizes what he is about to do, he says “Is this a dagger which i see before me, the handle toward my hand”(II, I, 40-41). Macbeth realized that he had to kill King Duncan, but when he sees the dagger, he is imagining what it would feel to actually carry out the plan.

Read More
729 Words | 3 Pages

Well Lady Macbeth, who is dead set on having absolute power, disagrees with that. She convinces Macbeth to kill, to cover up the murders, and tries to convince him that these murders will get them to the top. Lady Macbeth calls upon the witches and states, “unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty” (Macbeth Act 1 Scene 5 lines 31 and 31). This shows that while in the pursuit of power, Lady Macbeth wanted it so much that she asked the witches to “unsex” her and make her more like man. But along with that you see the theme of gender roles are uncertain which ties into Lady Macbeth leading Macbeth in this pursuit of power, also giving him the ambition that she wants him to

Read More
842 Words | 4 Pages

The dagger points to Duncan 's room and appears to be covered in blood. This encourages Macbeth to commit the crime of killing the king. Shakespeare is showing the audience that what Macbeth is about to do is evil and catastrophic which will change the whole course of the play. Moreover, his hallucination of the floating dagger signifies Macbeth’s confusion and he can no longer distinguish between his imagination and reality, which is why he firmly believes that the dagger is a sign to commit the

Read More

More about Macbeth's Desire And Insanity

Related Topics

Open Document