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How Is Guilt Shown In Macbeth

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Fear and Guilt Make You Wilt Blind ambition can lead to many bad consequences if if controls all that humans do. In Macbeth by William Shakespeare, he does exactly this which causes all that happens to him throughout the play. He shows many signs throughout the play that he is very fear from all the guilt he has caused himself. He is fearful of what to come and of who he has wronged. Macbeth makes many bad decision based on blind ambition and criminality leading to fear and guilt that causes his mental deterioration. Macbeth’s guilt first starts when he kills Duncan. Right after he does the deed, he says “Who’s there? What. ho!” showing that his mind is playing tricks on him and making him hear noises that are not there, revealing that …show more content…

Macbeth’s fear starts right after he kills Duncan. He explains “O, yet [he does]repent [himself] of [his] fury, That [he] did kill them” (2.3.893-894) showing that he feared that the two would tell their story to the others. As Elizabethan scholar Lily B. Campbell says, “We fear those that have been wronged lest they seek retaliation” (127) presenting that Macbeth will kill any whom he fears before they have the chance to retaliate and do anything to him. This shows the reason Macbeth has behind killing his best friend, Banquo. Also Campbell explains “Macbeth is fearful beyond care” (130) as he has killed too many people and his fear has grown too much for him to be able to come back to normal. These fear-driven acts “in both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth [reveal] the ambition which moves to rash deeds” (Campbell 127). Macbeth shows his fear last when Malcolm's army is moving to his castle (5.5.51) revealing “that despair which is the final stage of fear and which manifests itself as fury” (133). Macbeth is not fighting like a man but “fights irrationally ... with the courage of an animal” (133) as his mental deterioration has turned him into a beast. All of Macbeth’s fear has come from the guilt he had from killing all of the people he

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