Madness In Macbeth

Madness and dreams are very much like balloons. They lift us away from the ground, and away from reality. In Macbeth, William Shakespeare suggests the closer a person’s perception of herself is to reality, the more grounded she will be. Madness and illusion pull an individual away from this reality, and cause many problems. Often the process begins with a reality, and then the madness or dream carries the person away gradually before the balloon is popped and the fall begins. The audience observes this in Macbeth, with the character of Lady Macbeth. She falls too fast and plummets to the ground.

The fall begins on the ground, with a reality. In Lady Macbeth’s mind, her reality is that her husband is going to get what he is promised from

She knows she must “look like th’ innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t,” (I, v, 72-73) in order to help her husband commit the crime. Although she is holding her guilt to the side, Macbeth struggles to do this. Lady Macbeth chides her husband of his weakness, saying that she “would, while it was smiling in [her] face, have plucked [her] nipple from [a baby's] boneless gums and dashed the brains out, had [she] so sworn as [Macbeth has] done to [kill Duncan].” (I, vii, 61-64) In convincing herself that she is a cold blooded, and unfeeling killer, she believes she is able to commit murder without remorse, because she swore to do so. Still stuck in her illusion, Lady Macbeth gets her husband to kill Duncan, and helps clean up the mess. Her hands and heart are now stained red. However, she believes that “a little water clears [them] of [their] deed.” (II, ii, 85) In her attempt to disregard the human condition, she ends up floating even further away from the ground. This continuous ignorance puts her into the mindset that she can separate herself from her guilt, a thought that brings her further into madness. Her belief is that “things without all remedy should be without regard.” Now that the murder is over with, she continues to float higher and deeper into the illusion, believing that they have no “need to fear who knows” that they have killed Duncan and that as long as