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Imagery In Macbeth Essay

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Imagery within William Shakespeare's ‘The Scottish Play’
Macbeth struggles with his ambition and conscience. He is in conflict with himself, for whether or not he should kill Duncan to claim the throne. Once he has committed the crime he quickly realizes he has made a dire mistake and it occurs to him this murder, has changed something within. William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Macbeth (also known as The Scottish play) uses imagery of blood and water to show the guilt that overcomes the characters of this play.
As Macbeth sees the phantom of a dagger before him he says, “on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, which was not so before”(II, i, 46-47). Macbeth, merely, thinking of killing Duncan sees a dagger with large drops of blood on and around it. Before he had no intention of killing Duncan, but now that he has, he can already foresee the guilt to come with the image of the blood stained dagger. Instead heeding the warning the dagger foreshadows, Macbeth instead takes the blood smeared knife as a determination. He later uses this determination to kill the king. …show more content…

No; this my hand will rather the multitudinous sees incarnadine, making the green one red”(II, ii, 59-62). He recounts, flamboyantly, that all of the ocean will run red with the blood on his hands. The guilt has already overpowered him, to the point where he can't go back to return the daggers, that were used to kill Duncan. William Shakespeare took this opportunity to use the imagery of blood and water to show the audience what is happening, internally, to Macbeth. He has killed the king and defied God, and now, his hands could quite possibly run the oceans red. Macbeth is guilty of regicide; there is no denying

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