FREE ESSAY ON IMAGERY IN MACBETH

IMAGERY IN MACBETH

The play Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, is regarded as one of Shakespeare's best
tragedies. It deals with a man named Macbeth, who is introduced as a strong, brave war
hero. He has the respect of the king and his peers. The predictions of three witches that
Macbeth will become king begin Macbeth's descent into his own downfall. He decides to
take his fate into his own hands, The play Macbeth is full of images and motifs that
recur many times throughout the play. The images of light and darkness are referenced to
multiple times. There are many occurrences where hands are mentioned. The motif of
equivocations is constantly brought up throughout the play. However, there were three
images that stood out. The images of birds, sleep and blood are pivotal to setting the
mood and developing the characters in the play Macbeth.
There are many occurrences of birds throughout the play. Birds are used for many
purposes. Some birds signify power, some signify strength, some signify honor, and many
birds are of ill omen. They are used in the descriptions of characters. They are used to
make an analogy of what is occurring in the play, whether they are used in place of
people or to mimic the situation at hand. In the first mention of birds in the play, they
are used to show the high military power of Macbeth and Banquo. In Act 1, Scene 2, the
Sergeant tells King Duncan how just at the moment when Macbeth's forces defeated
Macdonwald's rebels, the Norwegian king attacked the Scots. King Duncan asks if the new
attack dismayed Macbeth. The Sergeant, making a sarcastic joke, says, "Yes, as sparrows
[dismay] eagles, or the hare the lion." He uses this analogy to show that the strong
Macbeth was not to be bothered. The next mention of birds is after Macbeth spoke with the
witches and he had sent a letter telling of the encounter to Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth
discovers that King Duncan is coming to spend the night at her castle. Lady Macbeth says,
"The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my
battlements." The raven is commonly known as an image of ill omen, and Lady Macbeth means
that the raven is hoarse from saying repeatedly how Duncan must die. In arguably the most
important scene in the novel, while Macbeth goes to murder Duncan, Lady Macbeth waits and
listens. She hears the screech of an owl. She says, "Hark! Peace! It was the owl that
shriek'd, the fatal bellman, which gives the stern'st good-night. He is about it." The
cry of a screech owl is thought to announce a death, and a "fatal bellman" is a night
watchman who rings a bell to call a prisoner to his hanging. Lady Macbeth is glad to hear
the shriek of the owl, because it signifies that Macbeth is in the process of murdering
the King. In the last use of birds in the novel, Ross and an Old Man are discussing the
odd things that have happened since the murder of King Duncan the night before. The old
man says, "A falcon, towering in her pride of place, was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and
kill'd." The falcon's "pride of place" is the highest point of its flight. And the owl,
which usually catches mice on the ground, went up in the air instead of down and killed a
falcon. Also, a falcon is a day creature and a royal companion, where the owl is an
untamable bird of night and death. Relating that occurrence to the events taking place,
it could be said that Duncan was the falcon, and Macbeth the owl. 
Sleep is also a recurring image in the play Macbeth. People sleep to relax. When people
don't sleep, they become more high-strung and stressed out. Macbeth hardly sleeps
throughout the entire play, to signify the huge amount of tension on his back throughout
the play. He sees sleep as a reward, something to take pressure off of him. When
nightmares or restlessness disturb sleep, an uneasy mood is created. A nightmare usually
tells of things to come. On the night that Macbeth murders Duncan, Banquo says to his
son, "A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, and yet I would not sleep; merciful powers,
restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature gives way to in repose!" Banquo does not
specify what is disturbing his sleep, but it is assumed it is most likely the witches'
prophecies. Later in the same scene, Macbeth suggests that he would reward Banquo if
Banquo would somehow assist him in something having to do with the witches' prophecies.
Banquo shows that he is suspicious of Macbeth's motives, and Macbeth ends the
conversation by wishing Banquo "good repose," or a good night's sleep. After Banquo goes
to bed, Macbeth hallucinates, seeing a bloody dagger in the air. He tells himself that it
is the time of night for such a hallucination. "Now o'er the one half-world nature seems
dead, and wicked dreams abuse the curtain'd sleep." Sleep is "curtain'd" because the beds
of the time period had curtains around it to keep out drafts. Macbeth states that in the
dark of night, wicked dreams can penetrate the curtains and sleep itself. Another
occurrence is right after Macbeth murders King Duncan. Staring at his bloody hands, he
tells his wife that as he left the King's chamber, he heard two men in the other room.
"There's one did laugh in's sleep, and one cried 'Murder!'" To him, it's as though the
men, even in their sleep, could see his bloody murderer's hands. Moments later, Macbeth
tells Lady Macbeth that he thought he heard a voice telling him he would never sleep
again. "Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep,' the
innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, the death of each day's
life, sore labour's bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief
nourisher in life's feast." A "ravell'd sleave" is a tangled skein of thread or yarn.
Macbeth uses it as a metaphor for the kind of frustration we experience when we have so
many problems that we can't see the end to any of them. In such a case, we often say that
we went to "sleep on it" in order to get everything straight. Macbeth also compares sleep
to a soothing bath after a day of hard work, and the main course of a feast. To Macbeth,
sleep is not only a necessity of life, but something that makes life worth living.
Macbeth feels that when he murdered his King in his sleep, he murdered sleep itself.
Of the many images found in Macbeth, the image of blood is the most abundant. The image
of blood signifies evil and underhandedness. Whenever blood is mentioned, the mood turns
dark, and it shows that foul play is at hand. As Lady Macbeth plans to kill King Duncan,
she calls upon the spirits of murder to make thick my blood; stop up the access and
passage to remorse. Thin blood was considered wholesome, and it was thought that poison
made blood thick. Lady Macbeth wants to poison her own soul, so that she can kill without
remorse. Also, just before he kills King Duncan, Macbeth is staring at the dagger of the
mind, and as he does so, thick drops of blood appear on the blade and hilt. He says to
the knife, "I see thee still, and on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, which was not
so before. However, he's not so far gone that he doesn't know what's happening to him.
Macbeth tells himself there's no such thing: it is the bloody business which informs thus
to mine eyes. The bloody business he refers to is the murder he's about to commit. After
Macbeth has murdered King Duncan, he looks at his bloody hands and says, "this is a sorry
sight." Lady Macbeth thinks it's a foolish thing to say, and when she notices that he has
brought the bloody daggers from King Duncan's bedchamber, she thinks him to be even more
stupid. She tells him that he must take the daggers back, place them with the King's
sleeping grooms, and smear the grooms with blood. Macbeth, however, is so shaken that all
he can do is stand and stare at his bloody hands, so Lady Macbeth takes the daggers from
him. When she goes to do the job she thinks he should do, Macbeth still stands and
stares. He asks himself if all the water in the world can wash away the blood. Will all
great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? He answers his own question.
No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one
red." In contrast, his wife thinks his obsession with blood shows that he's a coward. She
dips her hands in the dead King's blood, and smears the grooms with that blood, then
tells Macbeth that My hands are of your colour; but I shame to wear a heart so white. She
means that now her hands are bloody, like his, but she would be ashamed to have a white,"
bloodless and cowardly, heart like his. She leads him away to wash his hands, and she
seems quite sure that a little water clears us of this deed. Later in the play, when she
goes mad, she sees blood on her hands that she cannot wash away, no matter how much water
she uses. When Macbeth tells Malcolm and Donalbain of their father's murder, he says, the
spring, the head, the fountain of your blood is stopp'd; the very source of it is
stopp'd." Here, the meaning of your blood is your family, but Macbeth's metaphors also
picture blood as a life-giving essence. A second later, blood is spoken of as a sign of
guilt. Lennox says that it appears that the King was murdered by his grooms, because
their hands and faces were all badged with blood. Then blood appears as the figurative
clothing of a precious royal body, when Macbeth, justifying his killing of the grooms,
describes the King's corpse. Here lay Duncan, his silver skin laced with his golden
blood." In this scene, the last mention of blood comes from Donalbain, who says to his
brother, the near in blood, the nearer bloody," meaning that as the murdered King's sons,
they are likely to be murdered themselves. On the morning after the night of King
Duncan's murder, it is unusually dark outside. Ross says to the Old Man, Ah, good father,
thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man's act, threaten his bloody stage. The stage
is the earth, where humans play out their lives. Because of Duncan's murder, the stage is
bloody and the heavens are angry. Moments later, Macduff enters and Ross asks him, Is't
known who did this more than bloody deed?" The deed is more than bloody because it is
unnatural. King Duncan was a good and kind man whose life naturally should have been
cherished by everyone. All the dark and evil deeds taken place are described using the
image of blood.
The large amount of imagery in Macbeth adds to the depth of the play. Clever analogies
and the incorporation of birds, sleep and blood helped to give a sense of understanding
in the play. The three images often set the dark, underhanded mood of the story. They
developed the personalities and personas of the characters, whether it was the innocence
and goodness of King Duncan, the intensity and insanity of Macbeth, or the manipulative
evil of Lady Macbeth. The images of birds, sleep and blood contribute greatly to the
overall mood and the development of characters in the play Macbeth.