Imagery in Macbeth

One thing every culture, religion, race, and country has in common is the blood that runs through its people’s veins. No one is a stranger to blood, and its universality allows many authors to utilize it as effective imagery in their literary works. British playwright William Shakespeare uses blood imagery in many of his plays, one prevalent example being Macbeth. In Macbeth, Shakespeare uses blood imagery to symbolize guilt, foreshadow negative events, and develop Macbeth as a tragic hero.
In his famous tragedy Macbeth, Shakespeare uses blood imagery to symbolize the guilt of both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. For example, as soon as he murders King Duncan, Macbeth, regretful and guilt-ridden, 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¨ (2.2.57-60). Clearly, Macbeth is intelligent enough to know that the blood on his hands can physically be washed away with a little water, but, because Macbeth says there isn’t enough water in an entire ocean to clean his hands, the reader can infer he is referring not only to the physical blood on his hands, but also to his guilt over killing Duncan. Maynard Mack, the Sterling Professor of English at Yale University and author of Everybody's Shakespeare, writes that that the blood in Macbeth is ¨...both ordinary and special. it sticks like real blood: ‘his secret murders sticking on his hands,’ says Angus of Macbeth (5.2.17). It smells as real blood smells: ‘here’s the smell of blood still,’ says Lady Macbeth (5.1.47) hopelessly washing. Yet it finally covers everything Macbeth has touched, in ways both qualitative and quantitative that real blood could not” (191). Mack ...

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...tered blood, whether they were born hundreds of years ago or a few decades ago; this creates a highly understandable and relatable type of imagery appropriate for literary works such as Macbeth.

Works Cited

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