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Macbeth's Mental State Analysis

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Macbeth’s Mental State In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth the character Macbeth’s mental state drastically changes through the beginning of the play to the end, due to his choices. A soliloquy is used in plays when the actor is alone they speak the thoughts of the character to the audience. During Shakespeare’s plays he uses soliloquies to give a dramatic affect and show the audience what the character is thinking. In Macbeth the character Macbeth gives many soliloquies, which give insight to the way he is thinking and how his questionable choices have affected his mental state. Between Macbeth’s second and last soliloquies he becomes a drastically different person due to his poor choices. Macbeth’s dagger soliloquy shows the start of his …show more content…

To start this soliloquy Seyton tells Macbeth that Lady Macbeth has died. Macbeth’s instant reaction is stating that “She would have died hereafter”, he does not seem emotionally capable of the correct response to hi wife’s death anymore. Macbeth does not mention his wife anymore, which seems odd due to the connection they showed in the beginning of the play. Macbeth talks about how life is meaningless in everyway and “Creeps in this petty pace from day to day”. To end his dreary soliloquy he states that life “is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/ Signifying nothing”. This is a drastically different Macbeth than the one in the beginning of the play. This Macbeth has lost his manhood and made himself a person who cannot react to emotional situations properly. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth changed rolls in the end; she was plagued by the deeds that had been done while he became numb to the whole situation. Since Macbeth had made himself the master of time and his own destiny he skewed everything in the process. Because Macbeth took time into his own hand he made time speed up at an alarming rate which brought brought the early demise upon himself and Lady Macbeth With the murder of Duncan, Banquo, and Macduff’s family weighing on his heart Macbeth decided to shut his emotions down instead of facing the truth of what he had done. Macbeth’s view of life

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Macbeth is no longer an honest, innocent husband, as he was in the beginning. Macbeth has completed his transition from an honest and caring leader, into a cold, heartless individual, which is shown when he voices: “She should have died hereafter / There would have been a time for such a word.” (V.v.17-18) Macbeth is informed about his wife’s suicide, and shows absolutely no remorse, which shows how heartless he has become.

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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

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The character is suffering and this depiction of Macbeth is believed to have a modern mental illness. Macbeth’s past definitely can support the idea of his disturbed state of mind as we watch the character change throughout the film.

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Bryanna E. McCool Mrs. Dean British Literature 25 January 2018 Mental Illness in Shakespeare’s Macbeth The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, a play wrought with prophecies, deception, guilt, and death, brings light to the symptoms of mental illnesses and their effects on the human brain’s ability to reason, trust, and act in times of pressure. Both Macbeth and his lady are plagued by mental illness, and the effects of their illness only grow as the play evolves. Macbeth’s symptoms of schizophrenia and anxiety, as well as Lady Macbeth’s anxiety as well as hallucinations that eventually push her to suicide prove that not only can mental illness alter the way a person sees a situation, but it can also drive them to harm others and themselves.

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In Macbeth, Shakespeare writes about a man named Macbeth, who has a very strong ambition to be the the king of Scotland. His credulousness led him into believing the prophecy from the three witches without thinking rigorously. Because of this prophecy, Macbeth is willing to do everything he can to gain the throne, even to the extreme of murdering someone. Shakespeare uses syntax, similes, and personification to convey the evolution of Macbeth’s insanity.

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The play, Macbeth, shows the among between sanity and insanity and the struggle between reason and delusion. Throughout this whole play, Macbeth slips into a state of lunacy slowing turning into a psychopath. The basis of understanding the play is through the first murder, King Duncan. Macbeth’s other two assassinations are just used as efforts to secure his throne. He begins accepting the evil inside him and succumbing to the temptation to murder and insanity.

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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.

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There are many people in the world that experience mental problems and therefore affecting their personality. Not everyone though is as bad as Macbeth when it comes to mental deterioration. Macbeth is a very self-centered man and it leads him to change the person he once was. Although it is not seen much in the beginning of Shakespeare's play “The Tragedy of Macbeth”, Macbeth’s mental state deteriorates as the play progresses, which can be seen when he is guilty of murdering King Duncan, being taunted by the ghost of Banquo, and his speech to the witches.

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This contrast immediately gives the reader an insight into the torment that guilt and regret can cause. There is a clear definition between Lady Macbeth before and after the murder of King Duncan. This character change emphasizes greatly the theme of the impacts upon a person due to the unnatural acts they have performed. In Lady Macbeth’s case the impact was guilt and regret both of which tormented her to point of serious mental illness, insomnia and ultimately a self induced demise. The author 's intention in bringing a once strong and evil character to the mercy of their own morality is to educate readers upon the impacts that guilt could have upon their own life if they were to perform the unnatural just as Lady Macbeth did.

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In the soliloquy in Act three Scene 1 of Macbeth by Shakespeare, Macbeth talks to himself about the problems of being a king and he is afraid of what might happen to him. Macbeth also talks about how Banquo was his friend and how Banquo is the only person he fears. Macbeth’s predicament in the soliloquy is that he is afraid of losing his crown and that Banquo will get in his way. This is important because Macbeth does not trust anyone anyone because he does not feel safe and is convinced that the wrong thing are actually good. Through the literary devices of metaphor and personification, it will help us demonstrate Macbeth’s predicament.

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Macbeth’s state of mind changes dramatically throughout the play. This is revealed through his soliloquy. In his soliloquy, He shows his intention he would like to achieve but its construction shows Macbeth’s mind still very much in confusion. However, most of the time Macbeth shows three different fears considering the consequences of killing king Duncan. At the beginning of Act 1 Scene 7, Macbeth is in turmoil about killing Duncan.

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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

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This soliloquy is thematically significant because time represents order, organization and stability, and his own soliloquy represents the disorientation and chaos he had caused since the murder of Duncan. The occurrence of unnatural events caused by Macbeth’s crime is first mentioned

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The personality of Macbeth changes over the course of the play as Macbeth murders many innocent people like, Duncan, Banquo and Macduff's family. The death of these characters symbolizes the death and birth of something inside Macbeth and the beginning of his downfall. Macbeth, at the beginning or the play, a brave soldier only protecting his people and his king, to Macbeth a murderous tyrant only looking out for the greater good of himself. The death of Duncan symbolized the death of Macbeth's before anxious and confused self and birthed a Macbeth full of guilt and anxiety. After being led to Duncan by a floating dagger and murdering him, Macbeth returns to his wife crying, "One cried "God Bless us!"

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Celia Beyers Tinti Period 1/5 12 April 2015 Literary Analysis: Macbeth In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, he presents the character of Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is shown, as a character that schemes into making rebellious plots. She reveals the desire for wanting to lose her feminine qualities in order to be able to gain more masculine ones.

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