How Does Macbeth Show Guilt

Decent Essays
Macbeth expresses guilt shortly after killing the king and after hiring murderers. His remorse makes him a more human character and makes his downfall more tragic.
Macbeth is introduced in the play as a warrior hero, whose fame on the battlefield wins him great honor from the king at the beginning he is a loyal person, a human that has feelings, basically he still having conscience and because of his good actions he receive the name of Thane of Cawdor. But the ambition started when the witches tell him that he could become king, and he started thinking in evil things that he could do to reach his goal of becoming king and with the persuasion of Lady Macbeth his personality and ideas change drastically.
At the beginning of the story the witches

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    , he is too motivated by his conscience to fulfill his reputation. Towards the mid-part of the speech, euphemisms prove that Macbeth is focussed more on the consequences he could face, rather than ambitions. When Macbeth says that “Bloody instructions, which being taught return/ To plague the inventor: this even handed justice/ Commends the ingredients of our poison’d chalice/ To our own lips” (1.7: 9-12). Guilt will haunt him for a long time.…

    • 246 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    At the beginning of the play, Macbeth is always loyal to the king. He is seen as a respected general. Lady Macbeth persuades Macbeth to do his first evil deed by questing Macbeth's masculinity. Macbeth suffers from fear and guilt after his evil deeds. At that point Macbeth gets to be neurotic, experiencing hallucinations and restlessness.…

    • 363 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The theme of guilt and conscience is used to a great extent in the play Macbeth. It was used to change character development and gave reason for some imagery throughout the play. This theme had influenced the direction of the play immensely and had a huge effect on the main characters, and eventually leads to their death. Macbeth introduced as noble character, power corrupt, and Lady Macbeth going insane.…

    • 69 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Macbeth’s guilt prevents him from fully enjoying his ill-gotten gains. At the start of the play he is described as a hero and this quality is still present even in his darkest moments For example, Macbeth is visited by the ghost of Banquo, who he murdered to protect his secret. The apparition embodies Macbeth’s guilt and therefore causes Macbeth to nearly reveal the truth about King Duncan’s murder. Unlike Macbeth conscious guilt, Lady Macbeth guilt is subconsciously expressed through her dreams. By presenting her guilt in this way Shakespeare’s book is showing suggesting that Macbeth are unable to escape guilt for wrongdoing.…

    • 1081 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    During the entire play, Macbeth acts out of guilt and fear and is not once threatened or forced to execute a crime. By sinning, committing high treason, and ending the lives of many, Macbeth’s mental deterioration becomes complete. Although he was driven there by panic and the thirst for dominance, no excuse could ever validate Macbeth’s response to guilt and the power of his free…

    • 1192 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In the story of “ Macbeth”, Macbeth was driven by ambition. He didn't care what he had to do or who he had to hurt to get what he wanted. Macbeth kills the king. Later on he started to have guilty conscious. He started going crazy and not doing so good.…

    • 358 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The absence of guilt can destroy a human mentally, physically and emotionally. This is because a lack of guilt can make a human lose the things that make them human. They will lose morals, they will misuse power to destroy relationships so they can gain more power. Without guilt a human will have a loss of humanity, loss of morality and they will misuse power to destroy relationships to get more power. In Macbeth William Shakespeare portrays that the absence of guilt can turn a human into a cold, ruthless, vicious and cruel animal.…

    • 1148 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Guilt Theme In Macbeth

    • 1304 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Guilt is an emotion associated with feelings of shame, regret, or responsibility for something a person has done. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the two protagonists, Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth, both suffer feelings of guilt for a heinous crime, the murder of their king. Guilt manifests itself differently in these two characters, as it does in every guilty person. Shakespeare uses blood imagery to develop the theme of guilt, as both characters struggle with and grow accustomed to the presence of blood throughout the play.…

    • 1304 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It led him to become power hungry, greedy, violent and to commit regicide and murder. At the beginning of the play he is portrayed as an honourable, well respected, admirable warrior “for brave Macbeth - well he deserves that name”. However, as the play progresses, he becomes morally corrupt due to his lust and ambition for power, this is evident in his choice of actions, such as his…

    • 949 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    All of the killing that Macbeth had done was just to cover up for his first mistake of killing the king. Macbeth 's lust and greed destroyed to families, and killed many innocent and helpless people. Before his rise to power Macbeth would have died fighting to stop the bloodshed of innocent people, but now he was contributing to it. Macbeth had become so accustomed to the power, that he was unwilling to let it slip away. Due to the witch 's prophesy Macbeth sees himself as a god.…

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout the play, Macbeth showed significant signs that his conscience became corrupted and grew smaller as he committed more nefarious deeds. He not only killed innocent people; he also ordered entire families killed by other people. After the murders and during the end of the play, Macbeth even refused to face Malcolm and became stubborn bringing about his death which led to him not to care about the death of his wife. The action was also another demonstration of how Macbeth was the true villain as he showed no remorse even for the death of his wife. Evil is in everybody; however it is the actions we care out that make us truly evil or benevolent.…

    • 1071 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the play Macbeth, William Shakespeare examines guilt. Clearly, he believes that guilt will always torture you after committing something wrong. In the play, the actor Lady Macbeth states, “Here’s the smell of blood still. All the / perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. /…

    • 116 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the play, Macbeth starts the story out as a noble war hero. He was identified as an individual that people trusted and depended on. He was then awarded ‘Thane of Cawdor ’ for his heroic and outstanding deeds on the battlefield. The major turning point in Macbeth's story was when the three witches arrived and predicted his future. They announced that Macbeth would bequeath the throne.…

    • 703 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Being caught red handed is a universal symbol of guilt in the sense that one has done something unwholesome, but it usually does not equate to the feeling of remorse, as it does in Shakespeare’s tragedy of Macbeth. No one catches Lady Macbeth with literal blood on her hands, but she still has an unclean conscience long after the murder. Bloody hands symbolize the guilt held within Lady Macbeth, significantly playing into her character development, transitioning her from cold hearted and unfeeling to insane from remorse, leading her to kill herself with her own hands. Directly after the murder of Duncan, Macbeth feels much more guilty than Lady Macbeth, and creates a metaphor comparing guiltiness to the cleanliness of one’s hand, while Lady Macbeth does not yet understand the remorse that he feels.…

    • 763 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Macbeth is callous, he is unkind, and worst of all, Macbeth is only concerned about himself. “Macbeth has no conscience. His main concern throughout the play is that most selfish of all concerns; to get a good night’s sleep…” (McCarthy 3). He worries only about covering up the murders he committed and looking innocent to his court.…

    • 1561 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays