Waste And Isolation In Macbeth

In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, an essence of tragedy surrounds the main characters Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s lives as their simple desires draw them into a gradual isolation deterioration from society. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s eventual detachment from society can be seen as tragic because their initial nobility and potential in life falls apart as their desires get the best themselves. Moving into the play, Macbeth’s continuous harmful actions force him to move from a sense of guilt to a feeling of fear. The tragic sense of waste and disappointment notably resurfaces near the end of the play as the lives of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth permanently and sadly come to complete isolation from society.

Macbeth starts off as one of the most respectable

Lady Macbeth becomes engulfed by guilt and the powerful person she used to be, falls to the consequences of her own actions. Her constant reminder of her actions cause her to sleepwalk and she says “Here’s the smell of blood still: all / the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little / hand”(5.1.50-52). Lady Macbeth knows that she will never be able to undo the things that she has done and that her life will never go back to normal which all in all, sums up a sense of a wasted life. In addition, Macbeth also realizes that he has nothing good in life and that all the people he used to call friends have turned to enemies, proving the complete isolation of his life. Before the big battle, Macbeth reflects on his life by saying “I have liv’d long enough: my way of life / Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf, / And that which should accompany old age, / As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, / I must not look to have; but, in their stead / Curses”(5.3.22-27). There is basically no one left in the world that will ever like Macbeth and he realizes that it is fine if this is his end because he really has nothing to lose anymore. Macbeth has gone from being the most praised person to the most hated person because of the way he forced himself to live his life. Moreover, when Macbeth hears the news of Lady Macbeth's death, he merely dismisses it because he recognizes that their current lives were terrible anyways. After the news is delivered, Macbeth goes on to say “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, / To the last syllable of recorded time”(5.5.19-21). Although all the terrible deeds that Macbeth has done, it is still disappointing to see Macbeth giving up on life because of the potential that he initially had, where he was a noble man