#Motifs in macbeth how to#
#Motifs in macbeth free#

While planning to kill King Duncan, Lady Macbeth first strongly wishes to “thick my blood stop up the access and passage to remorse.”Īfter murdering Duncan, Macbeth’s conscience begins to be haunted. Blood being pictured literally to blood representing guilt in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, it keeps being repeated across the play. The play from its beginning to the end invokes blood in various ways. Observing the fair and foul theme, Macbeth delivers this dialogue, “ …false face must hide what the false heart knows.” As if to tell us how hard it is to connect the entirely opposite nature of things which happens in the play, Macduff says to Malcolm after his test of loyalty, “ such welcome and unwelcome things at once, ‘tis hard to reconcile.” Blood Teaching him this she says, “ look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t” The play basically repeats this particular vice in human beings to show us how it drives us into the tragic downfall in life.

#Motifs in macbeth how to#

When the Thane of Cawdor betrays, Duncan orders his execution and after confirming it he says, “ There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.” Lady Macbeth while provoking Macbeth for the future plotting asks him to learn how to look different from how he is really going to be. In the very first scene, the three witches chant together, “ Fair is foul, and foul is fair” and the very first sentence by Macbeth in the play is “ so foul and fair a day I have not seen.” Further, in the play, we get to see how characters and situations look like and how in reality they turn out to be.īanquo emphasises upon the same thing when he warns Macbeth that, “ oftentimes, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray in deepest consequence.”

The Unnatural against Nature Fair and Foul.

Even if it’s not their fault, people tend to feel the guilt for other people. It’s almost a natural instinct to feel guilt when a large amount of blood is spilt.

#Motifs in macbeth free#

At the well Macbeth says, “Will great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?” This is Macbeth pleading to the god’s to please purify him and wash him free of guilt and sin. After Macbeth murders Duncan he goes to the well and tries to wash his hands. If they get upset and scared, or beaten up in a fight and lose, the blood reminds them of their weakness.Īnother theme that blood symbolizes in this play is guilt. If someone gets injured in a sport, it becomes a “war wound” and a sign of courage and battle. The irony is that blood can symbolize weakness in some cases and strength in others. It’s almost like, the bloodier one is, the more heroic they are. In the beginning of the play Duncan says, “What bloody a man is that?” Due to the loss of blood Macbeth is made weak, but this weakness seems to amplify his heroism because he’s bloodied himself while fighting for his country. In one sense, blood relates to weakness and heroism. When Macbeth finds that he was been chosen as thane of Cawdor he was kind of surprised because while on a ride with his friend Banquo, three witches told him that he would become thane, and then someday become King of Scotland.īlood is symbolic in Macbeth because it touches upon each major theme in the play. It’s about a young war hero with the dream of someday holding a higher position. I think that it helps strengthen the theme of the tragedy. It also is a reoccurring theme throughout the play.

Its meaning seems to change from good to evil as the play progresses. In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, the word blood has many different meanings.