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Macbeth Blood Motif Essay

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During the Renaissance, writers utilized motifs to expand themes in texts through patterns, images, sounds, repeating words, and even symbols to represent a sundry variation of themes. Motifs can highlight something about a character to help the reader understand them better, establish the mood of the story, or introduce and reintroduce the theme throughout the reading. In Shakespeare's work Macbeth, the motif of blood is specifically targeted and reestablished throughout the reading. Macbeth is set in a period where bloodshed and violence are utilized to establish authority. A person is unworthy of serving as a true leader if they are not willing to draw blood. Through the eyes of Macbeth, blood is a stain of guilt that one can not remove. In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the motif of blood is symbolic of fear, guilt, power and represents the theme, ambition kills. The motif of blood reoccurs continuously in Shakespear’s Macbeth, but does not lose its importance. As the play becomes more somber and gruesome, blood is mentioned more frequently. When Macbeth started to have thoughts about murdering his own King, he began to hallucinate. Macbeth could not …show more content…

With Macbeth finally becoming the masculine character, Lady Macbeth turns to the feminine role. She begins to feel overwhelmed with guilt and can not take it. Lady Macbeth ends up seeing a doctor due to sleep problems. She spills secrets while being examined by the doctor and nurse. “Out, damned spot! out, I say!...Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” (Act 5, Sc. 1, 32-37). Lady Macbeth is sleep talking and having nightmares about failing to wash out a bloodstain, which is from an “old man.” The reader knows the old man to be Duncan, but the doctor and nurse have not a clue yet. The bloodstain Lady Macbeth is worried about is a symbol of guilt that she can not seem to get rid

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