Jordyn Geik
2nd Block Wook
Lady MacBeth
Why does MacBeth listen to Lady MacBeth who is just telling him how to live his life and what to think and feel? How does MacBeth just think it is okay and then does what she says to do? Why does lady MacBeth just not do it herself? Lady MacBeth is a round character who starts off looking like a flat character until she takes a dramatic change in characteristics in the end. Lady MacBeth is a harsh woman who holds very manipulative ways to get merciless and cruel acts done, with an twisted softer side that will end up bringing her and her husband to their fate.
1:v, 60-64 “Your face, my thane, is like a book… look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t.” This is the manipulating way that Lady MacBeth has on MacBeth. Lady MacBeth is afraid that people will know what they are thinking together. She uses her words just so to make sure that MacBeth knows what they have to do to keep this thought covered. Lady MacBeth knows that her husband's face can be read like a book and she is going to try to keep that from happening. This way she doesn’t come across as trying to tell him what he can and can’t do. 1:vii, 35-44 “Was that hope drunk wherein you dressing yourself? Hath it slept since?...cat i’ th’adage?” Lady MacBeth was manipulation her husband to think that he needs to hide his scarred and upsetting ways and put on a brave face and not be such a pansy. She is making him think that he can’t do anything but kill the king to make these feelings and thoughts go away. 1:v, 38-41 “Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here… make thick my blood.” She knows MacBeth is to full of the milk of human kindness to kill King Duncan, but she knows that a woman could never do such a crime. She knows that this is a crime of a man, so that’s what she wants to become. 1:vii, 54-58 “I have given suck, and know how tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums, and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this.” Lady MacBeth is manipulating and guiltily MacBeth into believing that she is the strong one in the relationship that carries them. She is manipulating him by saying that if she has promised to do something like this she would have followed through.
2:ii 11-13 “I laid the daggers ready he could not miss’em. Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t.” This is the softer side of Lady MacBeth that she doesn’t like to show to anyone. This shows that Lady MacBeth will talk her husband into doing all the dirty work so she doesn't have to. When she gets down to the situation of having to kill King Duncan she can’t do it because it looks to much like her dad. When she previously had stated that she would have dashed the brains out of the babe that milks her and pull its mouth from her nipple which it sucked. She can lay the daggers of the guards and smear the blood of the lifeless king on them after MacBeth had stabbed his motionless and sleeping body more than once, to cover up but she can’t bring herself to kill him.
5,i “Heres the smallest blood still all the perfumes and lotions will not sweeten this little hand.” She cracks and can’t control herself or the guilt that came with the issue of all the people that she killed or helped kill. She admitted to the crime of Killing King Duncan and helping MacBeth plan the murder. She breaks down and cries and says that she can still see the stain spot of blood on her had that she can’t wash off. No matter how much she tries or wants to wash this crime off or want to get rid of the guilt it eventually caught up to her and ate away at her sanity. This guilt eventually lead her to her own death because she could not take the guilt and she lost her mind completely.
Lady MacBeth may have been an aggressive and non kind person on the outside, but on the inside she must have truly cared. No person goes crazy over guilt if they have no remorse of the actions or crimes they have committed. This shows the harsh manipulative woman she was to get what she wanted with gruesome and merciless acts of violence, that then brought her and her husband to a traumatic end. While in the end they could never enjoy what they had because they didn’t have it for long enough without the guilt eating away at them for their cruel and outrageous acts.
Edited by Carolyn Mellema
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ReplyDeleteI liked your introduction, but it may be helpful to give important sections of the story that includes Lady Macbeth, like when she convinces Macbeth to murder Duncan, or maybe when she feels the regret and sorrow of her plot of killing Duncan when she speaks of being unable to wash off the "blood on her hands". It may also be helpful to add a transition sentence to your first body paragraph, it feels very sudden and the reader may not understand what you are trying to prove. I loved your quotes throughout your body paragraphs, the transitions before most of them and the explanations afterwards provide very solid evidence. It may also be helpful to have a transition sentence before each body paragraph to explain what you are trying to prove. Right now it is very hard to tell when one body paragraph moves into another, and I can't tell when you are proving different points. Your conclusion was awesome, I loved the thought you put into your ending and it left a lasting imprint in my mind as I finished your essay. If you could just sharpen the main ideas of your body paragraphs you would add to an already exceptional essay.
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