Macbeth Character Analysis Essay

After Macbeth kills King Duncan, he starts to fear that someone might have seen or heard him. Lady Macbeth, once again, comforts and helps him get through his fears and frustration by her powerful words and actions. After Macbeth kills King Duncan, he brings back the daggers that he meant to plant on the guards. Macbeth is scared about having killed Duncan and cannot go back to plant the daggers because he is ashamed of what he did. Once again, Lady Macbeth calms him down and goes back to plant the daggers herself. Also, Macbeth believes that he has murdered sleep and that he will never again be able to sleep easily and be at rest in his

She begins seeming evil and scary, asking evil spirits to come and make her less womanly. As the play continues, her personalty becomes less evil, because she shows shame for Macbeth’s murders. Lady Macbeth shows she is guilty for what Macbeth did, because she is responsible for convincing him. Lady Macbeth switches roles with Macbeth, because at the beginning of the play he is innocent and she is evil. As the play continues he becomes evil, and she becomes innocent. She feels haunted by her guilt, showing she truly is not evil as she seemed. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth begins the play as an ambitious and wicked woman, but shows she is truly guilty for Macbeth’s actions, revealing her innocent

Macbeth is confused as he is arguing with himself on what he should do. He states reasons not to kill Duncan, because Macbeth is his noble kinsmen and the act would bring dishonor. However, he also states reason why he should kill him, because Macbeth will then become king and fulfill the witches ' fortune. Lady Macbeth, who appears in the beginning as the driving force for the murder of King Duncan, also develops internal conflict. At first, Lady Macbeth seems to be a woman of extreme confidence and will. But, as situations become more and more unstable in the play, guilt develops inside her. For instance, she exclaims; "Wash your hands. Put on your nightgown. / Look not so pale. I tell you again, Banquo 's / Burried; he cannot come out on 's grave" (Shakespeare V, ii, 65-67). Lady Macbeth sleepwalks and frets about her evil wrongdoings because she is extremely guilty of her influence on Macbeth to commit the murder. Lady Macbeth reacts emotionally and dwells on her actions as guilt eats at her soul.

Following the murder, feelings of guilt begin to disturb Macbeth. After looking at his own hands Macbeth says, "This is a sorry sight". When Macbeth looks at his bloody hands he acts completely shaken and does not believe they belong to him and seems completely traumatized by his own actions. The sight of Duncan's blood cannot help but make Macbeth feel guilty about the brutal murder he has just committed; therefore saying it was a sorry sight. However, Macbeth's true remorse is portrayed through the last line in the scene.

Lady Macbeth gives Macbeth the first push to kill Duncan, and she wants to be ruthless, feel no remorse so that she and her husband will successfully kill Duncan. She desires to “stop up th’ access and passage to remorse” (Shakespeare 1.5.51) so that she will not feel bad about the murder. She persuades Macbeth to kill Duncan, but he struggles afterward when he does not follow the plan and forgets to put back the daggers he cannot face the evil act he has committed. Lady Macbeth is satisfied after Macbeth is king, but that is not enough for him any longer. Eventually the killings take a toll on Macbeth’s mental state, and the guilt he begins to feel is unbearable. Macbeth kills Duncan and then says “this is a sorry sight”

The quote, "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood/Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather/The multitudinous seas incarnadine,/Making the green one red." (2.2.57-60) demonstrate the guilt Macbeth has after killing King Duncan. He starts to feel pity for Duncan; however, the deed has been committed and now there's no going back. The idea of crime has transformed his Macbeth soul to sinful and immoral. His partner in crime, Lady Macbeth, at first was not traumatized by the execution until later on when her inner spirit confronts her with all her wrongdoings and the bloodshed of Duncan."Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—One, two. Why, then, 'tis/ 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." (5.1.30-35) As she speaks to herself in this line she envisions a bit of everything she's done. Unwillingly,

Shakespeare’s point is that the guilt of murdering King Duncan is too much for Macbeth to handle at the moment, so he shows a hint of weakness. This quote shows that despite wanting to overthrow Duncan as King, Macbeth feels remorse for what he has done, and he does not possess the willpower to return to the scene of the crime to finish the job. Macbeth is terrified of what he has done, so he momentarily collapses under the weight of his actions. This guilt will begin his spiralling descent until his death. During a peaceful banquet, Macbeth creates a

In this play, blood is taken very seriously. After the first murder scene, when Macbeth stabs King Duncan in his sleep, he begins to feel a large amount of guilt from the murder. A great example of this would be in the quote by Macbeth, "With all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red"(Shakespeare,II.ii.79-81 ), at this point, blood is looked at as mostly by guilt. What Macbeth is trying to convey is that even the entire ocean couldn't wash his hands clean from

He imagines that all of the water from the ocean could not clean his hands of the burden of guilt that weighed so heavily on his tormented mind. He pictures Duncan’s blood staining the entire ocean red. This passage illustrates that the act of murder has changed Macbeth's character. No longer does the blood suggest an image of ambition; it now symbolizes guilt and remorse. The passage also shows how no amount of water could clean Macbeth’s guilty conscience. Again, blood is referred to when Malcolm and Donalbain are discussing what to do. Malcolm says: "there's daggers in men's smiles: the nearer in blood,/ the nearer bloody." (II,iii, 139-140), meaning that their closest relatives are likely to kill them. Again, blood is being used to describe treason, murder, and

At this point, Macbeth understands killing is the wrong thing to do be still carries out his plan of murdering Duncan. Due to the fact that he is aware of the rights and wrong decisions, he is held accountable for his actions and in turn responsible for becoming more evil as the play

Throughout Macbeth, Shakespeare uses blood imagery to develop a foil between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth. In the play, blood symbolizes the guilt that the characters have. After the murder of King Duncan, Macbeth says, “Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood/ Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather/ The multitudinous seas in incarnadine,/ Making the green one red¨ (2.2).

Lady Macbeth convinces Macbeth to kill King Duncan in order to live up to his ambition. She states, “ Was the hope drunk/ Wherein you dressed yourself? hath it slept since?/ And wakes it now, to look so green and pale/

Out, I say!” The imaginary blood on Lady Macbeth’s hands symbolizes her guilt. No matter how hard she tries to forget it, and move on, she is ridden with the feeling of guilt. In the beginning of the play, when Macbeth's hands are covered in King Duncan's blood, Lady Macbeth says, " A little water clears us of this deed." (Act 2, Scene 2) At the time, she seems to think that they would be able to forget their crimes if they clear the physical evidence.

In Macbeth, the scene “The Knocking at the Gate” is debated whether the Porter’s common references to the devil and his annoyance with the equivocator have a dramatic effect on the story, or if his drunkenness adds comic relief after the death of Duncan.

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