Theme Of Blood In Macbeth

Improved Essays
Crime, murder, horror, and guilt primarily identify with blood because of its connection to life and death. Blood rushes through the body of living things, while the heart actively pumps it. But, death will be an outcome, if the heart fails to pump the blood and nourish the body. None-the-less, blood demonstrates various symbols in both literature and modern-day. Macbeth is best acknowledged for its connection to blood with represented qualities such as compunction, aspiration, and murder. Macbeth by William Shakespeare expresses a pivotal motif of blood that represents guilt, ambition, violence and death.
Ambition is a recurring theme in Macbeth that corresponds with the motif of blood. Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are both eager for power and
…show more content…
Lady Macbeth states,“make thick my blood; Stop up the access and passage to remorse”(1.5.43-44- Macbeth). Lady Macbeth asks to thicken her blood, because she wants to avoid guilt and contrition. According to A.C Bradley’s lecture on Macbeth, “She prays the spirits of cruelty so to thicken her blood that pity cannot flow through her veins,” which indicates she wants to be full of poison to abstain from remorse (Bradley 2). Lady Macbeth strives to meet her bloody thirsty intentions, which signifies a lack of compassion, ultimately demonstrating her ambition. Lady Macbeth says to Macbeth“[...] Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be what thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness, To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, Art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it (1.5.15-20)”. Lady Macbeth conveys Macbeth’s feminine qualities and his benevolence, allowing her to conclude that he cannot cause unjust harm. She enrages Macbeth, which causes the start of …show more content…
Culpability is a crucial aspect in Macbeth. Lady Macbeth experiences drastic guilt in the play. Before, Lady Macbeth experiences the feeling of remorse, she smears her hand in the King’s blood to prove her husband 's cowardness. However, the severity of her guilt conquers her. Lady Macbeth screeches, “Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, Oh, Oh!” (2.2). Lady Macbeth’s pungent hands are too strong to be cleansed by “all the perfume in Arabia” which emphasizes the guilt she feels to her core. Lady Macbeth calls out “Out, damned spot! out, I say!--One; two: why, then, ‘tis time to do’t.--Hell is murky!--Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?-- Yet who would have thought such and old man to have had so much blood in him”(5.1.30-34). Her hands are literally clean, but her conscience makes her believe they are ‘stained’ due to her unjust actions. Lady Macbeth no longer wishes to suffer from torment, which leads her to committing suicide to ease her pain that guilt brought upon her. Guilt has a major impact on the play in concern to blood. However, violence and death are the most prominent and

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Universal Theme In Macbeth

    • 1090 Words
    • 5 Pages

    English Essay- Macbeth Rose Hillard 10A, Mr Zitser Universal themes are communicated to the audience in William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth through the use of varying literary techniques and dramatic effects. This essay will look at the timeless nature of themes such as ambition and appearance versus reality in Macbeth, and how their transcendence of human nature contributes to the play’s relevance today.…

    • 1090 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    (4.1.170-174) Ordering a murder on Macduff`s wife and child shows that Macbeth has become completely driven by ambition; he has lost all sense of humanity. Macbeth`s desire to oppose Macduff and retain the throne would take him as far as shedding two innocent and defenseless people`s blood. In Shakespeare`s Macbeth, blood is a symbol of violence; and guilt; it is the result of the character`s ambition. Blood is a crucial element of the plot and character development in this play; Macbeth is often referred to as one of Shakespeare`s most bloody performances.…

    • 1276 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Power can transmute the way a character devolves and grows throughout a piece of literature. In the play Macbeth, Macbeth becomes power hungry and changed him into a demanding dictator. His need for power affects his relationship with other characters in the play. The other characters get to the point where they feel the only way to stop him is to slain him. The power changes Macbeth throughout the play to the point where he doesn’t even know who he has become.…

    • 1037 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Theme Of Power In Macbeth

    • 534 Words
    • 3 Pages

    These ambitions revolve around political yearning for more power and social backing of these vain endevours. The symbolism of blood in Macbeth reveals Shakespeare's political and social criticism because it allows the reader to view these issues of power in a common theme. All human beings innately dislike violence and bloodshed because of the natural instinct of survival. This insitinct is…

    • 534 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In the play Macbeth blood is a recurring theme that also acts hand in hand with the theme of guilt . [In act 1 scene 2 the wounded captain gives a gruesome and horrible description of the battle field, going into great detail.] (I don’t see how this sentence is relevant in the context of this essay) Once Macbeth and Lady Macbeth commit the murder, blood becomes a symbol of their guilt; they start to feel as if their blood stained hands will never become clean again, that their culpability for killing the king will always stay with them. Macbeth laments "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood/Clean from my hands?"(2,2,63-64).…

    • 326 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A perfect example of this can be found right before Lady Macbeth and Macbeth kill Duncan as she wishes for an easier way out of the mess that they have created: “Make thick my blood; stop up the access and passage to remorse” (1.5.43-44). When she refers to “thick” blood, she means that she wants to kill herself, as it was thought of to be healthy at the time to have thin blood. So, not only did she begin Macbeth’s morality-letting and descent into madness, but she now is beginning to think twice about killing Duncan. She is exemplifying cowardice in this passage, as she is already throwing in the towel on their operation to seize the crown. Next, Lady Macbeth uses the goriness of Macbeth’s heart to define his character, and make him feel weak and cowardly: “My hands are of your color; but I shame to wear a heart so white…”…

    • 988 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Macbeth Blood Motif Essay

    • 470 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In Macbeth the motif blood is used to show a characterization of being fearful and a mood of shock. In Macbeth, the motif blood is used to show a characterization of being fearful. This quote took place after Macbeth killed Duncan…

    • 470 Words
    • 2 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
  • Superior Essays

    (II.ii.85). As the play moves forward, Macbeth goes on to commit numerous other murders without his wife’s involvement, distancing himself from her and spiralling into greater isolation and paranoia. Lady Macbeth, while watching this, falls into a state of depression and sleepwalks frequently, all the while exposing to anyone within earshot her inability to free herself from her guilt. One night, shortly before killing herself, a doctor and her lady-in-waiting observe Lady Macbeth furiously washing her hands clean in her sleep of imagined blood, crying that, “...all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” (V.i.46-47).…

    • 1156 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the play Macbeth, Shakespeare states his concept of guilt for pictures for the audience to see how Macbeth and Lady Macbeth develop PTSD. Blood and water are two images in Macbeth that capacity as keys to open the shrouded message of the impacts of guilt. Blood…

    • 1573 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt”(Plautus). In the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare the author follows a character named Macbeth who receives a prophecy from three witches about his future as a king. Macbeth does everything in his power along with his wife Lady Macbeth to make this come true, even if it means murdering the king who’s already on the throne. Shakespeare uses blood and sleepwalking as symbols to convey his theme that guilt impairs one's actions and leaders to their own downfall. Shakespeare uses blood to symbolize guilt which helps to convey the theme.…

    • 910 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Next another symbol of significance is blood. This figure weighs on Macbeth and Lady Macbeth with the killings of Duncan and Banquo. Blood affects the reader by seeing them deal with guilt and how it makes them go insane. Macbeth says “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood, Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather, The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making he green one red”(2.2.60-63)…

    • 305 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Shakespeare’s Macbeth he illustrates the danger of ambition through the downfall and self destruction of the Macbeth’s. Their ambition sparks at the beginning with the idea of killing Duncan. It is then shown increasing through the entire play with the death of Duncan, Banquo, and Macduff’s family. At this point their ambition consumes them, their humanity is gone and all of their poor decisions start to have consequences that ultimately lead to their destruction.…

    • 1516 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    William Shakespeare’s 1606 tragedy, Macbeth, is a drama depicting the destructive unbridled ambition and downfall of the tragic hero, a recognisable human flaw that contributes to the enduring value of the play. Along with the political context, Macbeth highlights that excessive and disproportionate hubris will have terrible, tragic consequences. In the beginning, Macbeth’s ambition has been fuelled by devious characters such as Lady Macbeth and the three witches; this reveals the hamartia of the protagonist and the irreversible perversion of his moral compass. Shakespeare’s intent in this play is to convey the psychological and character impact that comes with excessive power and its abuse, obsession and particularly, ambition. The reader…

    • 1055 Words
    • 5 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

Related Topics