Motif Of Blood In Macbeth Essay

In the tragic play Macbeth, Shakespeare portrays the damaging effects of one man’s boundless ambition to himself and those around him. Macbeth, a martyr of his own strife, pursues power in his kingdom at the expense of others. His ultimate death resulted in the end of his tyrannical rule, but the death of his moral character resulted in part from the guilt he endured. The play is analyzed today for the similarities in human nature of modern society to that of Elizabethan times: moral plagues like guilt, ambition and hierarchy dominates humanity. In Macbeth, Shakespeare uses motifs to symbolize the various emotions and themes surrounding the events of the play. Primarily, Shakespeare’s use of the motif of blood to represent guilt is shown in

Essentially in this act, Macbeth is motivated by his inner ambitions and resolves his internal conflict, about loyalty, with the conclusion of murdering King Duncan. After the crime is committed, Macbeth contemplates about his acquired guilt and 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 the green one red” (2.2.60-64). Here, Shakespeare uses hyperbole to emphasize how “Neptune’s ocean” can not wash the blood off of Macbeth. In this scene, Neptune, a god of the seas in Roman mythology, is shown to act as the divine force that fails to lift the guilt off of Macbeth. In addition, Shakespeare also uses imagery to illustrate how the blood on Macbeth will turn “incarnadine” seas “red.” This represents the magnitude of guilt that Macbeth faces, such that even the god of the seas can not prevent the entire ocean being stained with the blood on his hands and the guilt he suffers from. To emphasize, the portrayal of Macbeth’s guilt in this passage is significant mainly because it is one of the few instances Macbeth feels remorse throughout the play. Later on in the other scenes, Macbeth, a dynamic character, loses his sense of remorse. Ultimately, his soliloquy after murdering King Duncan illustrates his former character trait of feeling remorse and the

In Act 5, Lady Macbeth’s former controlling persona is deteriorated into a weak victim of guilt. Within her sleepwalk, Lady Macbeth ruminates on her compiled guilt and states, “Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him” (5.1.28). To elaborate, Lady Macbeth realizes that the guilt of killing King Duncan and other pawns is inescapable. Shakespeare uses hyperbole to demonstrate how much the “blood in him [Duncan]” has effected Lady Macbeth and as a result, she attempts to erase every trace of blood, or guilt, from her morality. For instance, she says, “Here’s the smell of the blood still./ All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand” (5.1.33-34). In this excerpt, Shakespeare’s overstatement of “all the perfumes of Arabia” conveys how Lady Macbeth attempts and fails to transfer her guilt. Consequently, this is a result of the belief that Lady Macbeth, and Macbeth, have of using physical means to attempt to erase psychological fears like guilt. As a result of her failure, she demonstrates her frustration by saying “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” (5.1.25) Inevitably, her failed attempts of removing her guilt, or the blood motif of the “damned spot,” later contributes to her physical and moral