Guilt, Innocence and paranoia

• Guilt


  Intense fear of knowing yourself and facing what you have done
• Innocence


  A virtue that Shakespeare, in keeping with Christianity, celebrates
• Paranoia


  A poison that is relentless and inescapable
• Shakespeare is clearly condemning regicide by illustrating how violently and deeply guilt destroyed the Macbeths
• People believed God was all-seeing, so would see every sin and crime someone committed
• Innate goodness


  The Renaissance belief in the natural goodness of humanity
• The Macbeths are destroyed by their own guilt, suggesting their innate goodness rebelled against their deliberate immorality
• The Macbeths pursue a facade of innocence while plotting their murders, and as they descend further into their web of violence, they long to regain their lost innocence
• Malcolm, a posterboy of youthful innocence and virtue, is the rightful king of Scotland, showing how goodness is the correct way to be given power
• Macbeth's guilt


  Focused on the murder, as he expresses his greatest remorse directly before and after he kills Duncan. After that, his guilt comes in the form of paranoia, and this sends him on a frenzied murder spree
• Shakespeare suggests guilt and conscience are more powerful than ambition
• Guilt and religion


  Shakespeare associates guilt with religion
• Macbeth: '"We'd jump the life to come,"'
• Macbeth knows committing murder will sacrifice his life in Heaven, making him fully mortal and abandoned by God
• The threat of this is enough to make Macbeth reconsider his plan, showing the power religion and belief had over people at the time
• Shakespeare suggests Macbeth should have listened to his conscience and faith rather than to his wife
• Macbeth: '"But wherefore could not I pronounce 'Amen'? / I had most need of blessing and 'Amen' / Stuck in my throat,"'
• Macbeth's guilt


  He is deeply distressed and upset, scared because he has been denied God's forgiveness, so knows he is damned
• Macbeth: '"To know my deed, 'twere best not know my self,"'
• Macbeth would rather be unconscious or forget who he is than look at what he's done
• Ross: '"Alas, poor country, / Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot / Be called our mother, but our grave,"'
• Shakespeare shows how Macbeth's guilt has clouded the country in uncertainty and weakness
• Paranoia


  Portrayed as a poison that is relentless and inescapable
• Macbeth: '"For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind; / For them, the gracious Duncan have I murdered, / Put rancours in the vessel of my peace / Only for them,"'
• Shakespeare shows that Macbeth's ambition is punished, not rewarded
• Macbeth: '"O, full of scorpions is my mind,"'
• Lady Macbeth is initially free from any feelings of guilt
• Lady Macbeth's guilt makes her go into herself, closing herself off to everyone else, cannot be in darkness, and sleep walks as she is trapped in her own guilty thoughts
• The way her guilt takes over is gradual but destructive, showing how even the most callous and cold people aren't immune to God's judgement and their own human conscience
• Lady Macbeth: '"Stop up th'access and passage to remorse / That no compunctious visitings of nature / Shake my fell purpose nor keep peace between / Th'effect and it,"'
• Lady Macbeth is capable of feeling guilt, but wants to repress these feelings because she views them as weaknesses
• Shakespeare implies guilt is too powerful to ignore
• Lady Macbeth: '"Nought's had, all's spent / Where our desire is got without content. / 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy / Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy,"'
• Lady Macbeth is becoming aware of the infinite cycle of violence they have got themselves into to satisfy their paranoia
• Shakespeare demonstrates how guilt and regret can't be escaped
• Lady Macbeth: '"What's done, is done,"'
• Lady Macbeth: '"What's done cannot be undone,"'
• The change from "is done" to "cannot be undone" gives the impression that her guilt and desperation have increased
• Blood


  A symbol of guilt and death in Macbeth
• Hallucinations and ghosts


  Symbols of guilt and death, as they point to the existence of an Afterlife and the invisible world of the supernatural