FREE ESSAY ON MACBETH: A GUILTY CONSCIENCE

MACBETH: A GUILTY CONSCIENCE

You do unbend your noble strength to think so brainsickly of things. Go get some water and
wash this filthy witness from your hand. Lady Macbeth thinks everything will be okay if
Macbeth will just stop feeling guilty and hide the facts that might expose his guilt.
Macbeth's lust for power and his willingness to please his wife leads to his downfall. He
murders the children of his one time friend, and suffers the consequences of that sin.
However, Shakespeare uses Macbeth's guilt to develop pathos from the audience throughout
the play. He uses such symbols as unclean hands, restlessness, and hallucinations to
trigger a specific atmosphere. Shakespeare stresses the emotional sides of Macbeth and
the Lady, which gives them dimension. The audience sees them as human beings and not
simple murderers. 
Sleep is a strong, recurrent image in the play. It is spoken of in various ways by many
characters. Literally, sleep is the source of relief and sanity. The lack of it drives
Macbeth deeper and deeper into a desperate paranoia. The incompleteness causes a
dissatisfaction that drives him further and further into murder. The absolute power is so
thick and deep that he cannot get out of it except by which he has done to make others
fall into an eternal sleep. The fact that Duncan was killed in his sleep, and then both
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth refer to his eternal sleep as a far better state than the one
they have left with waking is most ironic. In Lady Macbeth's case, she who at first
scorns Macbeth's nervous anxiety about sleeplessness ends up in an endless living sleep
herself. Furthermore, the thanes of Scotland, living under the tyrant, can't sleep until
the day that peace and the rightful king is restored to the kingdom. Even the witches
speak of sleep in their charms, "I myself have all the other, and the very ports they
blow, all the quarters that they know I' the shipman's card. I will drain him dry as hay:
Sleep shall neither night nor day hung upon his penthouse lid; He shall live a man
forbid" (1:3:15-22). Sleep represents innocence, and those who cannot have sleep, are so
because they have lost their innocence and are overcome with guilt. 
In Macbeth, the word "blood" is mentioned numerous times. Shakespeare's use of this
particular word is significant. He uses it to develop the character of Macbeth and the
unfolding events of the drama. The powerful symbolic meaning of blood changes from the
beginning to the end.
Blood is symbolic of bravery and courage in this passage. Blood shed for a noble cause is
good blood. However, Macbeth's character changes throughout the play are characterized by
the symbolism in the blood he sheds. The blood near the end of the play obviously refers
to the guilt Macbeth feels. This is a stark contrast to what blood meant earlier in the
play. Blood, once seen as a positive value, is now associated with vice. This imagery
also shows the beginning of Macbeth's character transformation from a person of nobility,
honesty, and bravery to that of treachery, deceit, and evil. After Macbeth murders
Duncan, he begins to realize the strictness of his crime as he tries to wash Duncan's
blood off his hands, "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my
hand? No; this hand will rather / The multitudinous seas incarnadine, / Making the green
one red." (2: 2: 71-75)
This passage illustrates the act of murder has changed Macbeth's character. No longer
does the blood indicate an image of ambition. It now symbolizes guilt, remorse, and an
entry into the gates of hell from which no one can return. Macbeth regrets that not even
all the water in the ocean will wash the blood off his hands, he is beginning to realize
the seriousness of his crime, and that he has done something truly evil.
Like her husband, the once ambitious Lady Macbeth finally realizes the significance of
associating herself in the murder plot, and the severe consequences it will bring.
Tormented by nightmares, she sleepwalks through her bedroom and cries, "What, will these
hands ne'er be clean? Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of / Arabia
will not sweeten this little hand." (5: 1: 40, 46-47)
The blood imagery exhibits Lady Macbeth's guilt over Duncan's murder. Her hallucinations
of blood on her hands and her constant efforts to wash it off demonstrate that the agony
of having guilty feelings is causing her to go insane. We later learn that this guilt
strains her mind to the point that she commits suicide. 
Shakespeare is not merely portraying inhuman possession. The sleep walking is at least as
true to control as it is to seventeenth-century theories of possession, the 'spot' that
brands Lady Macbeth, after all, in her mind, not on her body. For Shakespeare and his
audience supernatural forces were not only external powers, but also forces within the
mind. Evil spirits could have no influence over human beings unless they had already
admitted evil into their minds, just as in the play it appears that Macbeth has already
entertained the murderous thoughts in which the witches encourage him. If he and his wife
are possessed by evil, it is because they allow themselves to be possessed. The
compulsion is in the mind rather than supernatural.
Bibliography
Macbeth by William Shakespeare