Macbeth and Lady Macbeth don’t seem so strong in the beginning, and their mental status is obvious. Lady Macbeth is the strongest; Macbeth is timid before the murder of Duncan. Macbeth wants to be king, but he feels like there are other ways of getting what you want besides murder. He is faced with the struggle within Macbeth between his ambition and his sense of right and wrong. In the play it is shown that lady Macbeth is a strong woman. She uses Macbeths manhood against him to give him ambition to kill Duncan. Right after the murder of Duncan, Macbeth washes his hands, even after the blood is obviously gone from sight he continues to wash his hands from guilt, in his mind the blood is still there. As the play progresses Lady Macbeth begins sleepwalking and washes her hands because she has all the guilt inside of her, it is overwhelming her and she’s keeping it all inside. After Macbeth murders Duncan, he is remorseless, and Lady Macbeth is the one with the guilty conscious. So starting out Lady Macbeth pressured Macbeth to kill Duncan so he could become king, and now that Duncan has been murdered the roles have changed. Macbeth now, has become obsessed with murder and anybody who comes in his way, is going to die. Next, Macbeth murders his best friend, Banquo. In Macbeths mind, murdering the people that are threatening to him leaves him threat less in the end. After Macbeth murders Banquo, he hallucinates that he sees him at the banquet. Macbeth is obviously trying to deal with his own guilt, and the hallucination is just his guilty conscience.
Blood is the symbol used to show guilt in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Before the murder of Duncan takes place Lady Macbeth is talking to the spirits and asks “make thick my blood”, which is Lady Macbeths plead that she will be remorseless for taking part in killing Duncan. After killing Duncan, Macbeth continues to see blood all over his hands, although the blood is washed away. “will great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood of my hands” he keeps washing his hands and in his mind he still sees them covered in blood. Lady Macbeth later has an obsession with bloodstains on her hands. She washes them continuously and talks about how the stains won’t go away, through sleepwalking. When Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost at the banquet, the ghost is bloody, which is a symbol of the guilt Macbeth feels for killing his best friend, and also shows that Macbeth is going insane.
Lady Macbeth greatly shows her guilt. Towards the end Lady Macbeth becomes a vent, through which Macbeth’s guilt is shown. Which only makes Macbeth more relentless. Throughout the play Lady Macbeth gets worse as the play progresses, and the murders are taken place. A doctor diagnoses her mentally ill, though Macbeth knows that she is washing her hands clearly from the overwhelming guilt. After killing Duncan, while Macbeth was washing his hands and telling her he couldn’t wash the blood off, Lady Macbeth said “a little water clears us of this deed”. If that was true then why did her guilty conscience lead her to sleepwalking and washing her hands of the blood? Lady Macbeth’s guilt later leads her to committing suicide.
In trying to acquire everything, the Macbeth’s tragically lose everything instead. Shakespeare showed the power of murder and guilt very well in the tragedy of Macbeth. Blood, Murder and guilt are all obvious signs of guilt, and result from guilt. Without the obvious reoccurrences of guilt in this play, it would have turned out very differently. Which is why after research, guilt is the major theme I found in the tragedy of Macbeth. Although there are many other themes, and people that have read Macbeth will argue that other themes were more important.
