Macbeth Hands Analysis

Several images are consistently used throughout the play Macbeth. One of the recurring images are hands. In the play, hands are used to signify action being committed separate from your being, and the guilt that comes with it. After having killed Duncan, Macbeth is afraid that someone is aware of the fact he had done it. “As they see me with these hangmen’s hands” (2.2.30). Here, Macbeth is removing his personal self from the murder. He does not see himself as a hangmen, but feels he merely possesses the hands of one. His hands murdered Duncan, and they are guilty, but he himself is not. Similarly, Macbeth, continuing to grieve with the reality of the situation, pleads, “Will the great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hands? No: this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red” (2.2.64-66). Again, he does see his whole body, or any other part of his body, as being bloody. Only will he need …show more content…
Unlike Macbeth, she has never personally murdered anyone. And yet, the guilt remains as metaphorical blood stains on her hands, scrubbing in vain to alleviate the burden. “It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands; I have known her to do this a quarter an hour” (5.1.24-26). Lady Macbeth tries and tries to clean the blood from her hands. While she can’t remove herself from responsibility the way her husband can, she still believes it is her hands that are dirty, not her brain not her body. She does not take bath after bath, scrubbing her body clean, but washes her hand futilely. She seems to realize this as she’s leaving the room, “Come, come, give me your hand; what’s done cannot be undone”(5.1.57-58). She in the end, realizes that no matter how much she scrubs, nothing, not even Neptune seas, as Macbeth put it, can eradicate the overwhelming guilt she is marred