The Agonizing Guilt In Lady Macbeth By William Shakespeare

Superior Essays
After a evil deed is executed by someone, guiltiness and anguish seem to fall after. In the play, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth conveys evilness throughout the duration of the play, but portrays painful thoughts as a result of the vicious events. In this picture, Lady Macbeth’s desires have made her perform an evil action which eventually causes the agonizing guilt that will make her end her life. The image given entails the two sides of Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth’s has bloody hands and the look of pure dismay upon her face. Her hands are facing up, drenched in blood as if she had just committed a gory crime. Her sophisticated and royal clothing is incorporated with blood smeared everywhere, including her bare neck up to her cheek bones. Lady Macbeth …show more content…
She tells him that if she had promised him that she’d dash out the brains of her own child, she would’ve done it, ‘Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums / And dash 'd the brains out.’ She uses the word dashed to emphasize on how she would destroy and murder her own blood and to prove that she doesn’t have an ounce of dignity within her. She would go through with the murder of her own helpless child, if she had promised what Macbeth had promised her which was to kill Duncan.
In the picture, the blood on her hands can represent the violence she has within her and the type of person she is, which is an evil one at most. The background being black is a representation of darkness. Darkness is commonly associated with immoral conduct. This is prime example of how Lady Macbeth showed cruelness from the beginning of the play.

n the middle of the play, Lady Macbeth showed a more guilty side to her. She had stepped back from her previous actions and felt as if it were time to seize the violence of her and husband. It seemed as if her guilt was causing excruciating agony and she couldn’t handle to pressure of the cruel actions of her and Macbeth’s. She proclaims,
“Nought’s had, all’s spent
Where our desire is got without

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    She and her society confuse womanhood and humanhood” (Kimbrough). Lady Macbeth's inhumane nature portrays the witches granted her request and made her cruel and evil. Lady Macbeth demonstrates her evil when she forces Macbeth to put up a false face before the dinner: “come on./ gentle my lord, seek o’er your rugged looks/ be brights and jovial among your guests tonight” (Shakespeare. III. ii. 26-28).…

    • 963 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Lady Macbeth, subconsciously is now trying to wash away the evidence on her hands. By the end, Lady Macbeth is ridden with her own guilt which may have lead her in taking her life.…

    • 105 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Lady Macbeth Quotes

    • 518 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Because of her loyalty to Macbeth, she has done what Macbeth afraid to do. “Give me the aggers. The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures. ‘Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal, For it must seem their gulit.”…

    • 518 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    By the end of the play Lady Macbeth’s guilt becomes untenable and she eventually kills herself. Evidently, the intensity of her guilt and shame was stronger than anything she consciously…

    • 1081 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The thick blood will stop the feminine qualities from reaching her mind. Lady Macbeth thinks that Macbeth isn’t ruthless enough to kill Duncan so he can become…

    • 769 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Lady Macbeth Guilt Essay

    • 660 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The nature of guilt, then, envelopes her state of mind and causes her to go insane with guilt. Evidences [1] In Act One Scene 5, Lady Macbeth summons evil spirits as she says, [1, V, 39-45] “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here and fill me from the crown to the toe topful of direst cruelty; make thick my blood, stop up the access and passage…

    • 660 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It burdens on her still, small voice and it is whatever she can consider. She starts to sleepwalk, demonstrating that her psyche can't quit thinking about the wrongdoing she has conferred. Pictures of blood encompass her and she utilizes water to wash her guilt away. Lady Macbeth has changed her mentality about how she sees herself.…

    • 1573 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    She had the same problem as Macbeth but she was having a hard time getting the smell of blood off of her hands. “‘Here’s the smell of blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand,’”(5.1). This also shows the guilt not going away just like the smell of blood on her hands as she tries to get the smell to go away as she tries to forget and move one.…

    • 466 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    She is guilt-ridden, paranoid, and tortured from the crimes that she and Macbeth committed in order to obtain the throne. Lady Macbeth’s final appearance in the tragedy is the sleepwalking scene. Her conscience has become too much for her to bare and has driven to the brink of insanity. She is unable to rid herself of the figurative blood that stains her hands, so her subconscious is making the blood a reality for her. She continuously attempts to wash the blood off her hands and insists that “the smell of the blood” (5.1.53) will not dissipate.…

    • 1261 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In 1978 Trevor Nunn directed a Macbeth film that is frequently considered being the definitive Macbeth film. This film stars Ian McKellen and Judi Dench. It was based on a Royal Shakespeare Company stage creation of Macbeth that was brilliant success. Trevor Nunn stays faithful to the content of the play and the interplay between the light and the darkness is more than striking in his adaptation of Macbeth. To create a puzzling and peculiar ambience for the viewers, the scene is played in total darkness.…

    • 833 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Guilt Theme In Macbeth

    • 1304 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Macbeth’s guilt manifests horrifically, and he sporadically kills his friends, his enemies, and innocent people alike. After he kills his best friend, Banquo, his conscience makes one last attempt to speak to him through the bloody ghost of his latest victim. He relates his situation to a pool of blood, recognizing that, “I am in blood/ Stepped in so far that,/should I wade no more,/ Returning were as tedious as go o’er” (3.4.168-170). The blood imagery represents Macbeth embracing his guilt, instead of letting it consume him like it does Lady Macbeth.…

    • 1304 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    Will Gibert Honors Genre Studies November 12th, 2015 Blood Macbeth, written by William Shakespeare, is a perfect example of theatrical tragedy. The viewer is instantly hooked with action as the play starts with battle in which Macbeth nearly slices his enemy's body in half to claim victory for his king. Macbeth starts at a high point, being a hero of war. Then play then takes a turn for the worse when Macbeth is given a prophecy from three witches stating that he would become king, and that his comrade, Banquo`s line would eventually seize the throne. From this moment on, murders are committed, tyranny rules over the land, and combat is inflicted; Macbeth rapidly declines from a noble man into a ruthless killer.…

    • 1276 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    This exemplifies how despite all of her new power, the guilt that she feels deteriorates her humanity by lessening the quality of her life. The washing of her hands symbolizes that attempt to wash away the guilt that she feels. But it obviously is not that easy. This leads to Lady Macbeth becoming so stressed over the guilt that she feels, which ultimately leads to her death. Therefore, it is clear that the repercussions of Lady Macbeth’s betrayal against Duncan, leads to the loss of her humanity through immense…

    • 1149 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s well-renowned plays that centralizes on a king’s struggle with guilt and, ultimately, the road to his demise. Although Macbeth was known for being a man of bravery and honor, Shakespeare utilized a plethora of literary devices to showcase that his ambition had overcome his state of mind. In Macbeth, Shakespeare used strong dynamic characters, significant motifs, and powerful soliloquies to develop the theme that the ultimate desire for power has the capability to tempt even the most noble men to be driven to corruption. To begin with, Shakespeare uses a strong dynamic character to develop the theme that the desire for power can cause noble men to become corrupt. In Act 1, Macbeth concluded that the key to the…

    • 1173 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Shakespeare presents an interesting dynamic in Macbeth wherein Lady Macbeth acts as the proverbial devil on the shoulder of her husband, constantly whispering in his ear. Though Macbeth is introduced as a loyal warrior under King Duncan of Scotland, he ponders murdering his king almost immediately after he is told by three witches that he will one day rule the country. Even so, Macbeth’s resolve to carry out this crime is shaky at best. Once his wife gets into his ear, however, that shaky resolution is ever so slowly strengthened. Lady Macbeth begins her work by insisting that to not kill King Duncan would be cowardly.…

    • 737 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays