Guilt focused

• Points covered?

  1. Use of supernatural
  2. Motif of blood and sleep
  3. Pivotal banquet scene
  4. Final soliloquy
• Use of supernatural plan?

  'Is this a dagger which I see before, the handle towards my heart'

  • Uses supernatural to show Macbeth's hallucination and his guilty conscience after Lady Macbeth coerces him into the murder

  'a coward in thine own esteem'

  • Word choice of 'coward' has connotations of weakness which contrasts earlier being called 'Brave Macbeth' and coerces him into the murder
• Motif of blood and sleep plan?

  'Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep'

  • Foreshadows Macbeth's future lack of sleep

  'Would all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood off my hands'

  • Metaphor meaning that just as Neptune controls all the water in the world, so if Macbeth had all the water in the world he would still not be clean.
  • The blood Macbeth is seeing is a hallucination
• Pivotal banquet scene plan?

  'Thou canst not say I did it. Never shake thy gory locks at me'

  • Word choice of 'gory' has connotations of blood and dirt. This tells the listening thanes that harm has been done to the ghost

  'It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood'

  • Repetition of 'blood' highlights it constantly being on Macbeth's mind
• Final soliloquy plan?

  'Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day'

  • Repetition shows how Macbeth feels time is passing by slowly and without purpose

  'Life is a tale told by an idiot'

  • shows that he knows his actions only led to guilt and misery