Madness In Macbeth

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In Macbeth, Shakespeare uses his expertise in imagery to show the characters going through the stages of madness and guilt. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth destroy the natural balance of the kingdom with their murder spree to royalty. Shakespeare uses bloodstains to show the guilt their crimes made, murder to display the evil within them, all to symbolize the rapid destruction of the natural balance of what use to be a strong kingdom. Macbeth shows a link between political and natural worlds with the rulers and murders. Killing King Duncan disrupts the social and political balance, causing the Kingdom to go into a frenzy. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have upset the normal balance with their crimes. All was well until the witches told Macbeth that …show more content…

One of the most famous quotes from this play is the best picture of imagery in the play, “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—One, two. Why, then, ’is time to do ’t. Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.” The famous Lady Macbeth quote shows the best piece of natural imagery associating the blood spot on her hand with the guilt of her murder. Her guilt is the smell of blood and the unwashable stain. She is faced with the fact that there is nothing she can do and that she has to live the rest of her life with this regret. Though very shortly after, she committed suicide because she was eaten up with guilt. The stains of blood was a forever reminder of her crime. Macbeth has a different sight of bloodstains, he sees the dead for whom he is responsible. Unlike Lady Macbeth, he pushed the guilt away and tried to portray himself as the rightful ruler, while anyone who got in his way was murdered. But, guilt only lead to more murders and even more guilt for Macbeth. His plan eventually ends with his own