guilt
Guilt is a punishment from God which haunts Macbeth and Lady Macbeth due to their ambition and lust for power. Macbeth’s guilt first demonstrates his loyalty to Duncan and awareness of the divine right of kings, but later reveals his paranoia. Lady Macbeth’s guilt illustrates her penitence and remorse.
PARAGRAPH 1:
Macbeth has intense guilt before killing Duncan which shows his loyalty, this is demonstrated by his hallucination of the dagger. Macbeth’s guilt corrupts him which is illustrated through the use of the theme of sleep.
‘a dagger of the mind, a false creation’
‘stars hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires’
‘heat oppressed brain’
‘Macbeth shall sleep no more’
‘Neptunes ocean wash this blood clean from my hand’ - foreshadows Lady Macbeth’s later downfall
Contextually link it to the divine right of kings and regicide.
PARAGRAPH 2:
Lady Macbeth is used to present the inevitable impact of guilt and how no one can avoid it. At first she is remorseless but dramatically changes as she later has hallucinations of blood and questions her sanity. She goes from being controlling and manipulation to being insane and fearful, showing how guilt corrupts her.
‘wash this filthy witness from your hands’
‘a little water clears us of this deed’
‘my hands are of your colour, but I shame to wear a heart so white’
‘Out damned spot! Out I say!’
‘will these hands ne’er be clean’
PARAGRAPH 3:
Shakespeare highlights the consequences of guilt. Guilt leads both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to lose control of their realities, linking to the theme of appearance vs reality and the supernatural. They both become shadows of themselves and their marriage crumbles. However, guilt affects the characters differently- Macbeth turns it outwards as he going on a killing rampage, however Lady Macbeth has an inward reaction which ultimately leads to her suicide.
‘what’s done is done’ - ‘what’s done, cannot be undone’
‘never shake thy gory locks at me’
‘the queen, my lord, is dead’
PARAGRAPH 4:
The motif of blood is used throughout the poem as a physical embodiment of the characters guilt, showing the way the characters are constantly tormented by their actions. It is used to convey the extreme psychological state which Macbeth is in and creates an anagnorisis, as the characters realise the reality of their actions and the extent to which they have sinned.
‘I’m in blood’
‘blood will have blood’ - could link to the religious teaching ‘an eye for an eye’ and suggest that Macbeth’s blood will be spared as a consequence for all the life he has destroyed.
‘Out damned spot! Out I say’
‘yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?’