Macbeth By The Use Of Evil example essay topic

BLOOD IN MACBETH Blood is the basis of all life. It can represent many things, such as life, death, and pain. Blood is also an effective storytelling element. The presence of blood gives the reader a visual aid to help enhance what is being told. Shakespeare uses blood in his plays to provide a dramatic element, one that every person can relate to. Blood plays an important role in Macbeth, and its presence means many things.

Blood is one of the common factors that each person in Macbeth shares. Everybody in the play is capable of bleeding and making others bleed. In one of the first scenes, the presence of an unknown bloody soldier is intended to remind the audience that violence takes away individuality and restores the basic element of survival. The spilling of another man's blood is one of the simplest parts of self-preservation, because making another man bleed proves that the winner is still alive (Calderwood 77). Evil and violence can afflict even the most favored of men. Macbeth, a military hero and a man with a strong conscience, still gives in to what evil has to offer him.

There is something in the human mind that allows even highly respected men and women to give into evil tendencies (Calderwood 72). Blood and violence can also be used to show the distinction between social classes. In Act I, Duncan is separated from the battle that is taking place, viewing it from a distance. The bloody scenery that is described in this particular scene, and the king's involvement only as a spectator, serves to show the spatial difference between royalty and the military. It can be guessed that violence has its roots in that separation, not based on Duncan's actions, but on the basis of the kingship itself. Also, throughout the play, blood simply is used to amplify the atmosphere of evil and violence.

The word blood is used in the play over 100 times (Shakespeare 113), and it is intended to be very real. Each new mention of the word tells the reader that evil is getting stronger and stronger in the play (Kernan 77). From the time the play begins with the bloody soldier, the gore builds and builds, and it sticks wherever it falls. These traces of violence and evil can never be washed away, no matter how much one may try. Many times do Macbeth and his wife attempt to remove the evidence of their wrongdoing, but it will not be replaced.

Macbeth realizes this, and admits it (Van Doran 259): Will all Neptune's great ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red (Shakespeare 134). Lady Macbeth believes that a little water will wash away all the evidence of their wrongdoing, but Macbeth knows the truth. He knows that the seas will turn red with the blood before it will come off of his hands (Van Doran 259). It should become obvious after only a few scenes that this play is a bloody one. In the second scene, a messenger is heard glorifying Macbeth's acts of violence to the king: Like valor's minion carved his passage Till he faced the slave: Which nev r shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, Till he unsealed him from the nave to th chops, And fixed his head upon the battlements (Shakespeare 114).

The play Macbeth is itself a representation of evil in its simplest form, and throughout the play good and evil war against each other for control, with evil having the most control throughout the story (Kernan 59-60). Essentially, Macbeth's entire reign as king is an attempt to build an order based on murder and betrayal. He sees the only way to make his life perfect is to kill those who would stand in his way (Kernan 65). Shakespeare uses the evil inside of Macbeth as a way of showing what is inside everyone and that if it is not kept under control, it can destroy lives. Macbeth seems to feed off of the presence of blood. Every time blood is present, Macbeth's place in the world rises more and more, and be becomes defined by the blood and death that he causes.

He is honored by blood, and he honors it by spilling it (Calderwood 79). Even Macbeth's wife uses blood to her advantage. After Macbeth kills King Duncan, Lady Macbeth instructs Macbeth to Go carry them, and smear / The sleepy grooms with blood (Shakespeare 133) and to place the murder weapon upon them in order to help keep suspicion directed away from her and her husband. Bloody imagery plays just as important a part in Macbeth's downfall as it does in his ascension. For every time that the spilling of blood benefits Macbeth, there is a time that it brings him pain.

Along with Macbeth's fear of being unable to cleanse himself after Duncan's murder, blood is used to show that every day Macbeth is king, his people become worse and worse off, and that they have no defense against it (Kernan 73): Bleed, bleed, poor country; Great tyranny, lay thou basis sure, For Goodness dare not check thee: wear thee thy wrongs; The title is a feared (Shakespeare 167). Shakespeare's usage of blood is also used as a cleansing of evil in the play (Kernan 70). Nature has a way of ridding itself of evil, in this case Macbeth. Evil is an unnatural thing, and does not fit into the general order. In Macbeth, Shakespeare chooses to rid one evil, Macbeth, by the use of evil (Kernan 73). Lady Macbeth also suffers her downfall from the blood she has spilt.

She begins to hallucinate in her dreams that her hands are still covered in Duncan's blood, and that it will not wash out. She is tormented in her sleep by it for days: Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One: two: why, then tis time to do t (Shakespeare 176). Blood is everywhere in Macbeth, and the number of different meanings it is given is tremendous. Blood is used to symbolize mortality, and the fact that all beings bleed.

It is used to represent the gap between royalty and the middle and lower classes, as well as representing pure evil itself. Most importantly, it is used to symbolize Macbeth's ascent to royalty, as well as his descent into death.