Lady Macbeth's Conscience Analysis

   Shakespeare's "Macbeth" holds many hidden themes within its already exuberant plot.  The first of these surrounds the murder of Duncan and the role that both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth himself played.  However, the true guilt of the murder can fall on either character.  Although Macbeth physically committed the crime, it was Lady Macbeth that pushed him to his limits of rational thought and essentially made fun of him to lower his esteem.  With Macbeth's defenses down, it was an easy task for Lady Macbeth to influence Duncan's murder and make up an excuse as to why she could not do it herself.  The guilt of Duncan's murder can be placed firmly on the head on Lady Macbeth.

Macbeth, written by william shakespeare displays a diverse range of themes and topics throughout the play. These themes are represented through a wide range of characters throughout the dramatic text. One that is strongly underlined throughout the whole play is the theme of the connection between ambition and manipulation and one of the main characters; Lady Macbeth. Throughout the sequences of the play, lady macbeth is depicted as a head-strong ambitious woman who challenges her husband's masculinity in order for him to commit actions in order to gain power.

A deadly combination of ambition and guilt poisons both Macbeth and his wife and leads to their deaths in the end. Ruined by her desire for power, Lady Macbeth’s descent into madness is more vivid and guilt seems to affect her more than her husband, even though he is responsible for more crimes. Her request to the spirits to “unsex [her] here,/ And fill [her], from the crown to the toe, top-full/ Of direst cruelty!” is contrasted as the more guilty she feels, the more weak and sensitive she become, a polar opposite of her usual masculine and bold self (1.5.44-46). As a result, she is unable to cope with the guilt and meets her ultimate demise by taking her life. This has an immediate effect on Macbeth: the almost always apparent tension of ambition and guilt disappears. He does not seem interested in living and is ready to face death in a manner more relatable to his former self rather than the murderer he has become. Moreover, Macbeth’s final remark is “Arm, arm, and out!”,

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the theme of guilt and conscience is one of many explored throughout the play. Macbeth, is a well respected Scottish noble who in the beginning of the play is a man everyone looks up to; however as the play progresses he makes a number of bad decisions. Eventually, as a result of his actions he suffers guilt and this plays heavily upon his character until his personality is completely destroyed. Shakespeare uses a range of techniques in order to develop this theme such as, characters, imagery.

Lady Macbeth’s strength of will persists through the murder of King Duncan as it is she who tries to calm Macbeth after committing the crime by declaring confidently that, “a little water clears us of this deed,” (2.2.67). Afterward, however, Lady Macbeth’s strong and ambitious character begins to deteriorate into madness. Her first sign of weakness occurred when she confessed that she could not have killed the king, revealing a natural woman’s feelings, “had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t” (2.2.13-14). Just as ambition has affected her before more so then Macbeth before the crime, the guilt plagues her now more effectively afterward as she desperately tried to wash away the invisible blood from her sin, “Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfume of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand,” (5.1.48-49). Lady Macbeth’s

Guilt is a very strong and uncomfortable feeling that often results from one’s own actions. This strong emotion is one of the theme ideas in William Shakespeare, “Macbeth”. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth feel guilt, but they react in different ways. Guilt hardens Macbeth, but cause Lady Macbeth to commit suicide. As Macbeth shrives to success guilt overcome’s Macbeth where he can no longer think straight. Initially Macbeth planned was to kill Duncan but it wasn’t enough he also had to kill Banquo and Macduff’s family. On the other hand Lady Macbeth had to call upon the weird sister to unsexed her so she had no true feeling towards anything as if she was a man. However, the true guilt of the murder

You can control guilt or guilt will drive you into madness. In the novel, Macbeth, guilt has taken over two of the main characters, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, but each one responds to it in a different way. Their similarities and differences are quite obvious and both are driven to their actions by this feeling. It will eventually cause both of them a breakdown, affecting their behaviors and resulting them into going through a psychological incapacity.

Not feeling any remorse, she is able to skillfully let go of guilt and skillfully get rid of evidence. As Macbeth comes back to her after the deed is complete he is very shaken up and extremely paranoid that someone saw him with the bloody daggers. Lady Macbeth tells him, “These deeds must not be thought after these ways; so it will make us mad” (2.2.34). By saying this she believes that you shouldn’t feel guilty about doing evil, you should just get it done and move on because thinking about it will only drive you crazy. Also she thinks when commiting violent acts such as murder make sure to get rid of any evidence that will lead people to believe you are a suspect. Frustrated and upset that her husband came home bathed in blood and the daggers in his hand she states, “Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers.”(2.2.52-53). She is extremely disappointed in Macbeth for being so careless and cannot believe that he did not go through the well thought out plan smoothly. In her eyes he is still a coward and does not know how to behave calmy when feeling guilty.

Lady Macbeth is conscience only of her desire to gain power, and pays little attention to the consequences that are sure to follower her selfish actions. In order to control Macbeth’s guilt she says,” These deeds must not be thought. After these ways; so it will make us mad (Thomson).” She starts to put ideas in Macbeth’s head, and attempts to make him heartless about murder.

Lady Macbeth is a complex and intriguing character in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth. She is a difficult character to embody as her personality seems split between two sides, one that is pure evil, sly and conniving in contrast to her softer, vulnerable, weak and feminine side. In the play we see her in these two main ways. The reader may feel a certain animosity towards Lady Macbeth throughout the first few acts as her personality appears more and more distasteful, in spite of this towards the end she has a serious breakdown over the guilt that torments her, even in her sleep, regarding her hand in Duncan’s untimely death.

Lady Macbeth is a great example of how ignoring one’s conscience can lead to self-destruction. Upon receiving Macbeth’s letter about meeting

William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth tells the story of a brave Scottish general named Macbeth, and how a prophecy told by three witches gave him enough courage to commit several murders all in the sake of his political ambition. In various scenes throughout the play we see guilt as a recurring theme affecting both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. In Act 2, scene 2—directly after the murder of King Duncan—Macbeth stumbles in with bloody hands and clear reaction of guilt as he says “What hands are here? Ha! They pluck out mine eyes. Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?” (2.2.62-64). Shakespeare uses a few literary devices in this scene to convey Macbeth’s feeling of guilt. Firstly, he uses the metaphor that these hands in front of him will pluck out his eyes. He does not mean this literally but instead that he will go blind from looking at them much longer because they are covered in blood. Shakespeare then goes on to use exaggeration with the phrase “will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?” meaning that it would take a great ocean of the Roman god of the sea Neptune to wash the blood from his hand, not just any lake. Lastly Shakespeare uses a rhetorical question to emphasize the magnitude of guilt Macbeth is feeling. Macbeth asks himself if the whole ocean will wash the blood clean from his hands, and clearly it will not. This is because the blood on his hands is no only physical but metaphorical. Additionally there is the idea that he cannot wash this guilt away. In the next line Macbeth realizes that he cannot simply wash the blood away in the ocean and that if he did the “multitudinous seas” would “incarnadine, making the green one red” (2.2.65-66). Essentially there is so much metaphorical blood on the hands of Macbeth that if he were to wash them in the ocean, it would turn the

Humans have free will, and this free will give us the right to choose between good and evil. In the play Macbeth by Shakespeare, Macbeth and his wife plot the murder of King Duncan, so that they can become rulers over Scotland. We realize that having the power to make conscience descions results in a responsibility for our descions. These responsibilities may manifest as guilt or happiness.

Noteworthy is Lady Macbeth's development of conscience during the play. As Macbeth himself sinks further and further down to Lady Macbeth’s level of ruthlessness, she begins to show the development of a conscience. While in the first four acts there is no development, suddenly she begins to have pangs of guilt, such as

Experiences and real life issues that arise in the lives of humans facilitate opportunities for them to learn more about themselves and the world. An extensive reflection on the theme of ambition and temptation that leads to guilt can be easily identified in William Shakespeare’s tragedy “Macbeth’ where the audience is able to witness the destructive conscience of the play’s major cast namely Macbeth and his wife, the overly ambitious Lady Macbeth. Whose unyielding temptation for the throne of which her guilt stems, drives a wedge between the loyalty her husband and the king share. Forcing Macbeth into a state of inner turmoil and murderous lust as represented by the bloodied dagger in which he imagines before him. Similarly to Shakespeare, Agatha Christie has incorporated symbolism into her work, “And Then There Were None. Often using hallucinations of the sea and a boy named Cyril as a common motif to invoke emotions of traumatic guilt and exemplify the treacherous past of one of the protagonists, Vera Claythorne. Both these mediums reflect on personal issues related to the human conscience such as ambition and guilt in and assist the audience in digesting the vile truth that is often associated with people.