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Guilt plays a strong role in motivating Macbeth, and causes Lady Macbeth to be driven over the edge of her being insane leading to her death. Throughout the story, there are many different types of guilty feelings that play a role in Macbeth’s fatal decisions and bring Lady Macbeth to commit suicide. Although there are many instances that show the power guilt has played on the main characters, there are three examples
His guilt is indestructible; nothing can quench it. In the quotation above, Macbeth desperately asks the doctor to remove the terrible psychic guilt that is destroying Lady Macbeth. He asks him if he cannot help a diseased and troubled mind, pleading with the doctor to just take one memory from her mind and destroy it with some “sweet oblivious antidote” (89). It is only later, to his dismay, that he discovers there is no fix to her guilt, no antidote, no medication. The doctor explains to Macbeth that a terrible memory cannot be vanquished from a person’s mind; a person must live with what he or she has done.
Murder brings much trauma unto the person who commits the gruesome crime. However, Lady Macbeth believes that their consciences will just be filled with confused thoughts as they try to convince themselves that they did a positive action by getting rid of the awful king. “ …What cannot you and I perform upon / Th’ unguarded Duncan, what not put upon / His spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt/ Of our great quell?” (1.7.69-72).
Classics remain many years later since emotions such as conscience and guilt are universally and continually part of many cultures; they are a means to control human behavior. Conscience is defined as an inner feeling or voice which acts as a guide to rightness or wrongness of one's behavior; for the play, the main characters knew what was right and wrong. Both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth chose to behave badly, then suffer consequences leading to their deaths. The guilt described in Macbeth is extreme. It could have prevented Macbeth and Lady Macbeth from doing evil deeds in the beginning.
In Act 2 Scene 1 of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Shakespeare explores the psychology behind guilt and vulnerability, and how they play a role in Macbeth’s mental instability. Macbeth shows the impact of guilt and vulnerability through his hallucinations, affected sleep, and credulity in the higher power. In this soliloquy, Macbeth’s growing uncertainty with murdering Duncan is being expressed despite the earlier convincing of his wife, Lady Macbeth. While waiting for the dinner bell that will initiate this bloody expedition, he sees a dagger pointing towards Duncan’s chambers.
Macbeth shows remorse throughout the play starting after he kills King Duncan. After he committed the crime, he shows signs that he is mentally unstable and starts to act crazy. When he murdered the King, he said to Lady Macbeth that he would not return back to the room after what he had done. Macbeth's crime led him to have a guilty conscience saying, “Sleep no more/ Macbeth does murder sleep, /the innocent sleep” (II.ii.38-40).
From Macbeth feeling “drowned in blood”, to Lady Macbeth not being able to wash her hands, shows how guilt will always come from making bad decisions. One wrong choice can ruin a person's life
5-7). In this instance, Macbeth shows that he can feel guilt, and he exhibits this by demonstrating that he does not desire to end the life of a man whose family was already victimized at his hands. Guilt is the one thing throughout the entire play that stops Macbeth dead in his tracks and causes him to take a moment to consider his present and future courses of action. Although Macbeth was lead to commit murder by the witches’ manipulative predictions of the future, he is the one who ultimately makes the choices that prove that he is in control of his actions, even when his actions cause him to be filled with
This is further emphasized by the contrast with Macbeth 's response to the guilt he was faced
Later Lady Macbeth starts sleepwalking from the guilt of helping Macbeth kill all of the people. This is a good example of guilt because he feels so bad that he isn't even making sense. He is doing strange things like talking in third person and just saying random
In Shakespeare's tragic tale, Macbeth, the main character, is a brave and powerful soldier who soon becomes fascinated by the witches prophecies, and is led into murdering several characters that cause him to be haunted with unrepairable guilt. He is never at ease, and is uncomfortable in his role as a criminal because of inability to bear with his guilty conscience and physiological consequences that make him believe he is going crazy. As he begins to see allusions and false creations, his guilt takes over his mind and transforms his loyal being into living in complete insanity. The thematic statement is that guilt leads to emotional instability and will always come back to haunt an individual. Shakespeare effectively portrays the theme of
My soul is too much charged With blood of thine already"(5.8.5-7). This illustrates that Macbeth as well is characterizing the power of guilt because when he gained all the power in cawdor he went around killing whoever he wanted to kill by saying he is charged with blood. Therefore, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s guilt of Lady Macbeth forcing Macbeth to kill Duncan and Macbeth after killing Duncan goes around killing who ever he wants, puts both of them in a phase of guilt at is demonstrated
However, as the play progresses, the gradual diminishing of Lady Macbeth’s stone-like ruthlessness becomes visible as she deals with the guilt that stains her hands. As Lady Macbeth attempts to cleanse herself of the guilt she harbors in her mind, it becomes evident that guilt is a demon. A demon that if not dealt
In both Hamlet and Macbeth, Shakespeare unveils his theme of how a person’s conscience guides them by describing how guilt and self doubt cause protagonist
In the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, guilt can punish people even if they are not caught, which is illustrated with the downfall of the Macbeths. Shortly after killing Banquo, Macbeth starts to hallucinate and says “Hence, horrible shadow! Unreal mockery, hence”(3.4.128-129). This quote shows that Macbeth feels guilt while he is imagining Banquo’s ghost.
