Exploring The Effects Of Fear In Shakespeare's 'Macbeth'

Macbeth is the ultimate story of a fight between the forces of good and evil. It tells the tale of a tragic hero whose quest for power leads to his ultimate downfall. Macbeth starts out as an honorable warrior but changes when his ambition becomes uncontrollable. As he becomes increasingly paranoid, Macbeth uses violent means to eliminate threats to his Scottish throne. As the play progresses, blood continuously plays a part in the events as the murders become more frequent. William Shakespeare, the author of Macbeth, uses blood imagery to develop Macbeth’s character, create a foil in between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and to symbolize honor and guilt.

Could Macbeth influence your kids not to bully? Bullying is where another person picks on or messes with another person just for the enjoyment or because of their personal life. In Macbeth the characters show terror of how characters fear Macbeth. It shows imbalance of power when Macbeth thinks he controls people. It shows intent of harm when Macbeth kill people. How bullying was shown in Macbeth, show what happened and how it compares to bullying.

Every one of Shakespeare 's plays are heavily imbedded with motifs. A motif is any element, subject, idea or concept that is constantly present through the entire body of literature. (motif) I chose to examine the play Macbeth. It is a very intense play full of violence, betrayal, and even the supernatural. It is well known to be saturated with themes and motifs that are repeated throughout the play. These motifs are important because they often foreshadow events on the play. They also create a atmosphere that helps shape the events of the play. I am going to focus on two motifs that seem to play a heavy role in the storyline of Macbeth. The two I have chose to focus on are the motifs of blood and nature. Since Macbeth is know for its violence blood is a very important part of the play. Nature also is representative of things to come and upsetting the natural balance of things. These are only a fraction of motifs that are present in this tragic play.

Macbeth seems to be going kind of crazy lately, so if I were to get him a gift I would get him some anxiety medication. Macbeth seems to be very worried about the whole situation with King Duncan. He doesn’t want anyone to know his secret and quite frankly he doesn’t want to know it himself. “To know my deed, twere best not know myself”(2.2.90). He is freaking out about the whole situation because he knows what he did was wrong; however, he did it anyway. Now that he killed King Duncan he is paying for the cost of his death by experiencing extreme mental and anxiety issues. Anxiety mediations would greatly improve Macbeth’s quality of life because it would help him to control his fear of being caught and it would help him to not be so nervous

Macbeth, the protagonist in William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, is the Thane of Glamis. He is a brutal fighter on the battlefield and is loyal to his king, Duncan. He fights alongside his good friend Banquo and loves his wife, Lady Macbeth, dearly. He receives prophecies regarding his future. This causes him to take fate into his own hands and make poor decisions. These decisions leave him feeling guilty and paranoid. The characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth demonstrate the influence of guilt in developing one’s paranoia and desperation to maintain power and position in Acts II, III, and V.

Fear, a Double-edged Sword Whether as a small child or as an adult, most people have experienced the heart retching terror of walking up their stairs on a dark and quiet night. It will usually begin as a nervous, fast-paced, walk which will then form into an awkward run. Running is obviously the quickest way to escape the much dreaded, ankle-grabbing monster that lives in the basements of most unlucky humans. As mankind it is natural that one would run from something they dread.

Living in Fear Foretold by the witches he is to be king, Macbeth is triggered by Lady Macbeth’s derisive comment: When you durst do it, then you were a man (1 vii 54). Using her sly persuasion Lady Macbeth forces her husband into doing the deed, and suggests that only once he’s completed the deed will he be a real man. Traumatised by killing King Duncan, he becomes extremely anxious about the near future and is shaken by the thought of committing the unspeakable act, betraying the belief of the divine right of kings. Through committing the act of immorality Macbeth attains the role of King further indulging in the pleasures he ultimately desires. After employing assassins to kill Banquo, in the hope this will make his position more secure,

In the extract, Shakespeare shows Macbeth’s determination to reach power and how the tyrannical king is willing to use fear and violence to get what he desires. We see that Macbeth feels threatened by Banquo and therefore wants him dead. As he considers his motives in killing the thane, Macbeth reasons that “There is none but he / Whose being do I fear: and, under him, / My Genius is rebuked.” Macbeth makes it clear that he fears Banquo above all others, and is mistrustful of him. Banquo’s ‘wisdom’ makes Macbeth feel foolish and weak, which is emphasised by the key word ‘fear’; the mere concept of Macbeth fearing a man who has made no move to hurt him only highlights the fragility of his position in power at this point in the play. The use of the aggressive verb ‘rebuked’ once again shows that, despite Macbeth experiencing no outward hostility from Banquo, he still feel as if he is in danger of being attacked and even usurped – perhaps due to Banquo’s evident “royalty of nature.” These largely unfounded fears make Macbeth feel as though he is illogical in fearing the thane, and therefore makes him question his own intelligence.

William Shakespeare wrote Macbeth in the early 1600’s. Macbeth was written during a time of political unrest in the Jacobean era, political context is a strong theme of the play. It seems that politics have not changed much over the centuries. Although politicians may not be murdering each other for their chance at the throne, the majority are corrupt and committing felonies to get to and stay in a position of power. Political corruption today facilitates numerous criminal enterprises. Macbeth’s desire to be King led him to commit the heinous crime of murder. Macbeth shows that although hundreds of years have passed, political malfeasance remains unchanged today. Stewart and Williamson both portray Macbeth in the scene right before

Lady Macbeth plants the seed of murdering king Duncan in Macbeth's mind. The language Shakespeare uses here is significant, the flower is associated with beauty and goodness while the snake is associated with evil. The association with a snake would have been especially strong because in the bible the serpent is seen as an evil being. These comparisons to bible characters would also have shocked Elizabethan audiences, as they believed in heaven and hell.

Throughout Macbeth, Macbeth finds himself in deeper and deeper trouble. He falls into temptation to do the wrong things. This causes him to go further down in a hole that he cannot get out of. He starts off by killing King Duncan to take his throne. This puts Macbeth into a stage of gilt and fear, and he does not know what to do about it. Macbeth has paranoia so he thinks that the best thing to do is kill more people. If I could talk to him as a friend, I would tell him that he should not fall into peer pressure, and that everything would be all right. I think this is good advice because then he might have not started to kill everyone.

At the very beginning of the play, Lady Macbeth is provoked by the letter she receives by Macbeth and starts plotting the murder of Duncan. She also wishes she were a man such that she could commit the murder all by herself saying so in Act 1 Scene 5, “Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty” (Macbeth 1.5.36-52). She appeals to these spirits to remove all aspects of her femininity and seeks to gain power through the prophecy of the witches. Her fear about the ability of her husband to commit the murder is subdued in her designated gender. Lady Macbeth manages her feminine power through her sensuality and pretended weakness through her fainting streak at the notice of Duncan’s death. Manipulation, usually through sexuality is often depicted as the source of women’s power still Lady Macbeth uses this power of hers to commit murder, a masculine demonstration of power. Lady Macbeth in her soliloquy about the planning of Duncan’s death refers to her husband as an individual who plays honestly and does not engage in wrongdoing.

After reading a brief summary and seeing clips on YouTube, a got afraid when I saw the witches at a thunderous night. The outward appearance of the witches scared me because they considered one of the supernatural elements in the play. The prophecies lead Macbeth to become more greedy and ambitious about things which lead him to commit bad deeds. King Duncan’s kindness toward Macbeth and his wife made me feel that king is very justice and appreciate his general victory by giving him the new title the thane of Cawdor. I got angry when Macbeth went to King Duncan’s room and killed him without any mercy. This view leads me to feel that the innocent king floating in his blood harshly and violently by the betraying Macbeth. Lady Macbeth

As a virgin to The Shakespeare Theatre, I was pleasantly surprised when my recent encounter with Macbeth was a stimulating and enjoyable excursion. The two and a half hours I had predicted to be less than enchanting were filled with symbolism, and an overall attitude towards the Shakespeare classic that I had never contemplated before.

Psychoanalytical criticism is a form of literary critique, which uses some of the techniques of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of literature. One of the more prevalent Psychoanalytical theorists after Freud was Jacques Lacan. In his text, “The Signification of the Phallus,” asserts that the idea of both sexes are based on the male “being” and the female “having” the phallus, and these two differences determine the relations between the sexes while also bringing them together. For Lacan, the phallus for males represents power, authority, and desire while for females the phallus signifies lack of power and agency (182).