The Guilt of Lady Macbeth Essay

In the Shakespeare play, Macbeth, Macbeth is responsible for all the deaths in the play because Macbeth didn’t have to do anything about the prophecies, he could have chosen not to kill King Duncan, and Macbeth decided all on his own to have Macduff’s family killed.

After he kills Duncan, Macbeth carries all the guilt, and is too shaken by shame to continue, while Lady Macbeth either feels no guilt, or represses it, because she is able to continue the deed and frame Duncan’s guards.

Macbeth, a tragedy written by William Shakespeare and edited by Maynard Mack and Robert Boynton, displays the many ways in which guilt manifests itself and the effects it has on its victims. Throughout the play, characters including Lady Macbeth are deeply affected by guilt in ways they had never expected. Macbeth takes its audience on a journey through the process in which guilty gradually eats away at Lady Macbeth and forces her to do what she thinks is best. Though Lady Macbeth may have initially seemed unaffected by the murders she had been involved in, her desires eventually faded and were replaced with an invincible feeling of guilt which eventually took her life.

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the title character Macbeth and his wife are both exceptionally ambitious, often taking rather radical measures to accomplish their goals. While this ruthless drive to power is seemingly prosperous at first, it quickly crumbles to naught as guilt infects their minds with grim consequences to follow. Macbeth transforms from a noble general to a guilt-ridden and despaired murderer, while Lady Macbeth’s usually stoic and masculine persona deteriorates into a pitiful and anxious shell of her former self. The feeling of remorse quickly plagues the two characters and overpowers ambition through manifesting itself through nightmares, ghosts, and paranoia, and ultimately leads to their demise.

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the theme of guilt and conscience is one of many explored throughout the play. Macbeth, is a well respected Scottish noble who in the beginning of the play is a man everyone looks up to; however as the play progresses he makes a number of bad decisions. Eventually, as a result of his actions he suffers guilt and this plays heavily upon his character until his personality is completely destroyed. Shakespeare uses a range of techniques in order to develop this theme such as, characters, imagery.

You can control guilt or guilt will drive you into madness. In the novel, Macbeth, guilt has taken over two of the main characters, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, but each one responds to it in a different way. Their similarities and differences are quite obvious and both are driven to their actions by this feeling. It will eventually cause both of them a breakdown, affecting their behaviors and resulting them into going through a psychological incapacity.

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a tragedy in which the plot evolves in great accordance to the guilt that the individual characters feel. The guilt starts with the planning and execution of the murder of King Duncan. To this event Lady Macbeth and Macbeth react in different ways. They both become guilty in some way or another but the guilt they feel is comprised of different reasons. It is due to their differences in character that they react in the ways they do. While it might not seem like both of them become guilty after this event, when explored their actions show clearly the guilt they feel.

Along with ambition, guilt is another common theme seen throughout Macbeth.  Almost all of the main characters are seen to have some sort of guilt during the course of the play, but two stand out far beyond the rest.  That is Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.  Since they both were in on the conspiracy to kill King Duncan, they both share it as a heavy burden.  They both seem to handle it in different ways however.  Macbeth, being the one who has committed the actual murder or one of his close friends, is immediately shown to be full of regret as he states, "Wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst"(2.2.75-76).  Macbeth shows for a short time that he would go back and "wake," or revive King Duncan if he had the chance.  We then see Macbeth start to become somewhat insane, being eaten away by the guilt of this murder.  As for Lady Macbeth, she is guilty for a multitude of reasons.  Along with Macbeth, Lady Macbeth does share the burden of killing King Duncan, but is also burdened by Macbeth 's growing reign of tyranny.  As seen throughout the last few acts, Lady Macbeth is being eaten away by her guilt, feeling that this is all her fault.  Right before the scene where Invernous, Macbeth 's castle, is stormed she her guilt drives her to end it all.  She commits suicide right before Macbeth 's rule comes to a tragic end.  I feel that Shakespeare has used the theme of

    There is a large burden of guilt carried by Lady Macbeth and Macbeth in Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth. Let's look at this situation closely in the following essay.

In this essay I am going to answer the question above and I will do this by saying whether or not I feel sympathy for lady Macbeth and I go through different parts in the play. After reading parts of the play and watching the video I don’t’ feel very much sympathy for lady Macbeth, although I do feel some sympathy for her in some parts in the play. Over all I think that lady Macbeth is a fiend as she says stuff that’s not very nice to make Macbeth do the things that she is too scared to do herself. I also think that she is a caring person really but she needed to be made evil by witchcraft, as she would not be able to do what she does through out the play in her normal person.

Lady Macbeth is the mastermind behind Duncan’s murder. This is significant because apart from being the key initiator in fuelling Macbeth’s ambition, Lady Macbeth concocts plans to achieve the goal by herself. An example of this, is the murder of King Duncan. In the quotation “When Duncan is asleep/ whereto the rather shall his day’s hard journey/ Soundly invite him, his two chamberlains/ Will with wine and wassail so convince”(1.7 62-64), Lady Macbeth orchestrates a plan to kill Duncan. This is significant because Macbeth’s reluctance, as shown in his soliloquy(1.7.1-28) proves that Macbeth would not initiate Duncan’s murder, due to his phlegmatic personality. Therefore if Lady Macbeth did not hatch a scheme to kill Duncan’s murder, the course of the play would have been dramatically different. This quotation also ties in with the theme of appearance versus reality because no one in the Macbethian or the Elizabethan era

Humans in general experience the dread of guilt pressing on their conscience and, no matter how hard one can internalize this guilt, the psychological torment can drive a person to insanity without any hope of return. Macbeth, Shakespeare’s play provides a story of Macbeth’s slow regression from being a noble soldier to a deranged murderer who is swimming in power and slowly drowns in his power. Macbeth’s fear of his secret being revealed begins to take over his actions, leading him to have to do acts that even he disagrees with in retrospect. His heinous acts then begin to overwhelm him and affect his everyday life, leading to his inevitable downfall. Shakespeare makes the theme of the play apparent through Macbeth’s decisions and emotions

Even though Macbeth and Lady Macbeth committed numerous crimes, there is one of them who is ‘more’ guiltier. When seen from the legal perspective, Macbeth is guiltier because he committed the crime of murder. Macbeth kills Duncan because of the demands of power. When he realizes that he is abound to be found, he killed more people or created situations that translated to the death of others such as the guards and family members of other leaders. Lady Macbeth can be seen as morally guilty through her actions and acts. For example, he communicated to Macbeth about what the witches said and ‘persuaded’ Macbeth towards killing Duncan. For example, Lady Macbeth raised issues around his manliness and the Lady developed a narrative that implied if

Lady Macbeth soons starts persuading him to kill Duncan, so that Macbeth can take his place,. Leading up to Macbeth murdering Duncan. Macbeth goes back and forth on what he is about to do, Lady Macbeth also tells him that he will become more of a man, and to be more than what you were a man. Domeone might ask why is she guilty. First she is guilty because she made an outright kiling machine.

As the late English poet William Shakespeare said, “suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.” In other words, the fear of getting caught is always a persistent thought in the mind of someone who is guilty. William Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe both utilize literary devices to portray the theme of guilt in their stories and to show how a guilty conscience can lead to insanity.