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Macbeth Tomorrow Speech Analysis

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William Shakespeare, in his Elizabethan play, The Tragedy of Macbeth develops the theme that life is fleeting and empty in his Tomorrow speech in Act 5, Scene 5. Shakespeare’s purpose was to engage a deep connection between the the audience and lay because omnipresence of this theme, with people have their own daily routines along with others. He skillfully utilizes the symbolism of the candle and its connection to the idea of light and darkness, as well as the repetition of the word tomorrow to express the cyclical nature of routines, and schedules to evoke a bleak, and detached tone in order to relate to the audiences daily monotonous struggles. Macbeth creates a bleak and hopeless tone with his multiple symbolisms with the candle. In Macbeth’s infamous “tomorrow” speech, his line …show more content…

23). The speech itself represents the unfeeling nature of time, and the candle specifically connected to life being snuffed out and being completely overwhelmed by death. This is not the first association between a candle and death in this play. Lady Macbeth carryied around a candle when she was sleepwalking, kept it at her bedside, and had light with her at all times. For her the light represented her desperate and bleak attempt at redemption from her murders. She tried to use that flickering, feeble, artificial light to dispel the darkness, and clean her hands of the murders she had committed. While for Macbeth the connection with the candle focused more on how short lived and feeble a candle is, similar to his statements on life throughout the speech. Macbeth’s candle had already been extinguished, he felt no guilt,

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