Macbeth also shows that he is filled with guilt and is suicidal when he says, “I have almost forgot the taste of fears…I have supped full with horrors. Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, cannot once start me” (5.5.11,15-17). This shows that Macbeth is familiar with his horrible thoughts and that they can’t startle him anymore. He has lost touch with reality and has become numb to his violent thoughts. Another time Macbeth feels guilty is right after murdering Duncan and forgetting to leave the daggers with the servants.
The namesake of the play, “Macbeth” is a man who faced a decision between his own personal passion and his moral obligations and duties. The two choices pulled at him and seemed to torment him even after he made a decision. Through the conflict that Macbeth felt because of his decisions, the reader can better empathize with him, and can obtain a more profound lesson from the story concerning decisions between personal passions and moral obligations. Macbeth is not what one would call “perfect.” He is neither a hero nor an absolute villain. The fact that he feels the stress or tension between his choices and desires helps to create a more human like, accessible character.
Macbeths Stages throughout the Play (An analysis of Macbeths Manhood) The play Macbeth is about many different things. It shows what power can do to someone once they have a little taste of it, then they start to get greedy and want more and more. In this play people will have nothing but loss and hatred in them because of what Macbeth has caused them all from three little prophecies that the witches told him. The prophecies are that Macbeth will get are that he will be Thane of Cawdor and then king of Scotland. The third prophecy is for Banquo which is telling him that even though Macbeth is going to be king your sons will, in the end, be king.
Macbeth, a conflicted character, changes throughout The Tragedy of Macbeth. The challenge of wanting the title of King of Scotland lives within Macbeth. This caused him to make irrational decisions that eventually lead to his downfall. Deserving respect, craving power, and staying determined are qualities that Macbeth possesses and cycles through during the play. At the start of the play, Macbeth was known as a respectable and honest soldier.
Instead of adversity being directly presented in the play, it is created by the actions of the title character. Following a prophecy in which he becomes King of Scotland, Macbeth commits numerous atrocities, including regicide, to fulfill his supposed destiny. Adversity, when viewed as misfortune, can be applied to both the trials that Macbeth endures and the overarching theme of fate and free will. While influenced by the prophecy, Macbeth ultimately decides his own fate, and carves a path that traps both himself and other characters in a cataclysm. Before murdering Duncan, Macbeth expresses doubt about killing his king through numerous soliloquies.
At the beginning of the play, Macbeth was a noble and loyal person, but by the end of the play, his “vaulting ambition” had taken over him. This caused him to become malicious and nihilistic and above all murderous, Macbeth portrays a tragic hero. Shakespeare portrays a tragic hero as someone who is noble and valiant but turns out to have a tragic flaw and Macbeth portrays this by fighting for his country and king but then murdering the king because of his hamartia, “his vaulting ambition”. Macbeth is greatly responsible for his downfall, but the witches have an impact on Macbeth’s actions. In Greek tragedies characters face a point in which they turn towards death, almost all plays have someone die and, in the end, justice prevails.
Throughout history many leaders have had large amounts of power that eventually led to their fall because of poor decisions that were influenced by others. In Macbeth by William Shakespeare, the main character, Macbeth is a nobleman to King Duncan. During this play Macbeth has a chance to take the place of King Duncan. When Macbeth’s wife Lady Macbeth finds out she soon gets involved in immoral ways. Shakespeare is trying to show that people that have a chance at power can be manipulated into doing wrong things by those around them causing their downfall.
There is no way that only a pursuit of power would drive someone this crazy to murder people who are not even threats to his goal as king so why do it in the first place? While nearing the end of the play, readers can see that Macbeth is using different coping methods to deal with his guilt such as doing other laborious tasks to distract his thoughts which is something people do a lot when dealing with guilt on any level of extremity. Another thing we see is how Macbeth feels that he has to lie about what he has done to keep himself safe. He feels burdened by what he has done and as a professor who studied Shakespeare 's plays once said “The more he lies, the more he cripples his conscience. The more he deceives, the deeper the trauma embeds itself in his mind” (Evans).
I believe this is an example of how love is presented in the play as Macbeth is in love with the idea of his success. Macbeth goes to great risks in order to obtain his power, some of these risks even consist of killing and sacrifice. In order for Macbeth to stay true to the word of the Witches, he takes matters into his own hands. Therefore, Macbeth needs to kill the current king in order for him to seize the title. In Act 1, Scene 4, Macbeth quotes “Let not light see my black and deep desires.” This quote speaks about the desire Macbeth has to kill King Duncan as he claims that no light is shining, therefore, no one is able to see the gruesome desires within him (the murder of Duncan).
In this play, blood can symbolize a lot of things, but the main thing that blood symbolizes is guilt. Death and/or killing can happen very fast or in an instant, but blood can remain for even longer. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth had lots of worries and feelings of guilt throughout the play after the murder of characters, but they start to believe what if they can’t remove the blood or guilt from their hands. In the play, Lady Macbeth states “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—One, two.