Why Is Guilt Important In Macbeth

In the tragedy of Macbeth, Shakespeare conveys the belief that success can be obtained by dishonesty. There are many things that Macbeth has that makes him more project than others, starting with the guilt and remorse. The guilt became more intense when macbeth came to reality that he had just stabbed Duncan. Macbeth easily prevails over his situation of guilt and remorse, while Lady Macbeth is still struggling. “Out, damned spot!

Macbeth, a tragedy written by William Shakespeare and edited by Maynard Mack and Robert Boynton, displays the many ways in which guilt manifests itself and the effects it has on its victims. Throughout the play, characters including Lady Macbeth are deeply affected by guilt in ways they had never expected. Macbeth takes its audience on a journey through the process in which guilty gradually eats away at Lady Macbeth and forces her to do what she thinks is best. Though Lady Macbeth may have initially seemed unaffected by the murders she had been involved in, her desires eventually faded and were replaced with an invincible feeling of guilt which eventually took her life.

Everyone deals with guilt at least one time throughout their life, and several authors use guilt to help build up suspense in their story. Guilt in Macbeth not only affects his mental state of mind, but it also destroys him physically, along with a few other characters such as Lady Macbeth. The characters are affected by guilt so much, that it actually leads to their death essentially, just because they were not able to handle the consequences for the events that occurred. Despite being destroyed by guilt, they were still forced to carry on with their lives and they did have to try to hide it, even though Macbeth was not doing so well with that. His hallucinations were giving him up and eventually everyone knew the he had murdered Duncan

    There is a large burden of guilt carried by Lady Macbeth and Macbeth in Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth. Let's look at this situation closely in the following essay.

Macbeth immediately regretted killing Duncan, and he suffered from the guilt throughout the entire play. Evidently, it was his guilt that drove him down the path of evil and death, as he thought he was already in too deep, and there was no escape. This burden is what triggered his downfall. Likewise, Lady Macbeth also suffered from guilt. While hers was more masked and hidden than Macbeth’s it was revealed how much the guilt was torturing her “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand” (5.1.44).

William Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth, explores many different themes including loyalty, betrayal, ambition but is it the powerful theme of evil and the consequent guilt that have the most devastating effects on the play’s protagonist, Macbeth and his loyal wife.

Macbeth, one of William Shakespeare most well known and famous plays. Macbeth is a pretty crazy play between witches spells, murder and people losing their minds. Guilt plays a strong role in this play, and even though Macbeth and Lady Macbeth want everyone to think that things are going well, things are not what they seem to be. Guilt causes Lady Macbeth to be driven over the edge of sanity and to her death. Throughout the play, there are many different people who feel this guilt that play a huge role in Macbeth's fatal decisions and bring Lady Macbeth to commit suicide.

    There is hardly any emotion in William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth that outweighs that of guilt. Both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are seriously compromised by the impact of this emotion.

At first, guilt starts to overcome Macbeth when he kills Duncan. When Macbeth approaches his wife after killing Duncan it is apparent to the readers that he starts to feel ashamed of what he has just done. Macbeth is shown to be as someone who is fearless and nothing will get in the way of what he wants to achieve, but as soon as the ambition of him becoming king starts taking over and he acts upon his intentions, the guilt as well slowly starts taking over. As it states in the play; “I’ll go no more: I am afraid to think what I have done; Look on’t again I dare not” (Act II Scene II Line 65-67). Macbeth says this to his wife after she tells him to put the daggers back at the place of the murder, but he refuses saying that he cannot go back and it scares him to look at what he has done. We get to see more of Macbeth’s character through this, how he is unable to witness what he has just done because he cannot believe how cruel he has become in to getting what he wants. In the beginning of the book when he slays the traitor he does not feel guilty about it but feels proud because he knows he did

Most people in life when they do something bad they often deal with consequences of guilt. Guilt is shown throughout The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare and is the perfect play to describe guilt. After all the tragedy Macbeth caused his guilt grew and grew. It all started when the three witches gave Macbeth the prediction that he would soon become King. After Lady Macbeth reads the letter she realizes that Macbeth is too nice to kill to get what he wants, so she wants to convince him to kill in order to take the throne and become king.

In William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth, Shakespeare is able to create a theme that displays how guilt has the capacity to corrupt individuals’s minds and make them insane. In the play, Macbeth has the chance to become King of Scotland and what he must do to achieve this sends him into a bout of insanity and corruption. Lady Macbeth tries to push him to do it because of her desire for power, but ultimately she ends up feeling guilty as well. Through his use of the motifs of sleep, gender confusion and reversal, and mentions of the face, Shakespeare is able to establish his theme of how power corrupts people.

'As a result of Macbeth's unpredictable actions and thoughts the audience's perception of Macbeth changes a great deal throughout theses scenes. Shakespeare gives us a clear insight into how the witches' prophecies have consumed Macbeth, but also how ambition and power, two major themes of the play, affect human nature and corrupt a once loyal, highly respected and trusted nobleman. In the earlier scenes Shakespeare allows Macbeth to debate whether he should murder King Duncan thereby showing the audience that he still has a conscience. Macbeth understands that as Duncan's "kinsman" and "subject" he has no moral basis for regicide.

This drove Macbeth’s ambition to kill the king, which is one of the most important scenes where violence is exposed. After King Duncan gets murdered by Macbeth by being stabbed to death in a bedroom, Macbeth gradually starts to regret his sinful deeds, because of this Macbeth slowly becomes nervous and more cautious and suspicious of the people around him. The unbearable stress and guilt that Macbeth is under turns him mad. This madness drove him to hire murderers to dispose Banquo. Macbeth started to lose his sanity after seeing Banquo's ghost and had visited the witches.

One of the ambitious characters in the play was Macbeth as his ambition even conquered his own sanity: “The eye wink at the hand, yet let that be which the eye fears, when it is done, to see” (Act 1, Scene 4). This shows that even though he knew what he was doing was wrong his ambition drove him to do it. Guilt is the other main theme of Macbeth. Guilt is shown by Lady Macbeth through the ending of the play and her guilt eventually drove her to kill herself: “A cry within of women … What was that cry for? The queen, my lord, is dead” (Act 5, Scene 5).

Guilt and pride, although not as strongly corruptive as ambition, still play key roles in Macbeth’s life. Proving to be ruinous, guilt manipulates Macbeth and his morality yet not enough to prick him from his future wrongdoings. The awful gut wrenching feeling of remorse and self-disgust that guilt produces is meant to teach one a lesson. Guilt is meant for people to learn and grow from their mistakes, after all no human being is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes, but it is what one learns that makes the difference. After experiencing a tremendous amount of guilt, Macbeth can more clearly see the difference between right and wrong. Although he can differentiate good and evil, Macbeth chooses to ignore this knowledge. Being the uncontrollable man he is, Macbeth’s rendition of growing into a better person still knocks on sins door. For example, instead of physically killing Banquo, he hires trained murderers to do it for him. No blood on his hands equals a clean conscious