English

Without your sanity what are you really left with? In William Shakespeare’s tragic play Macbeth, the tragic hero Macbeth starts out has a brave and heroic solider and then ends up as a heartless murderer. However, by the end of the play, Macbeth’s sanity has completely left him. In the beginning of the play Macbeth slowing starts drifting away from reality. Macbeth is saying this before he is about to kill the king. “ Is this a dagger which I see before me,/the handle toward my hand? Come let me clutch thee. /I have thee not, and yet I see thee still./Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible/. . . ” (II, i, 33-61). He can see this dagger floating in front of him but he cannot grab it and during this he is still trying to mentally prepare himself to go kill the king. Then after the murder has occurred Macbeth is found shouting this to his self and Lady Macbeth. “ Still it cried, ‘ Sleep no more!’ to all the house:/ ‘ Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor/ Shall sleep no more: Macbeth shall sleep no more’” (II, ii, 40-43). He is saying this because he can’t believe what he just did and he doesn’t think he will be able to sleep ever again. Then he just keeps getting crazier has the play continues. During the middle of the play Macbeth has just hired killers to assassinate Banquo and now they are having a dinner party and Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquo and says this “ The times has been that, when the brains were out:/ The man would die, and there an end:/but now they rise again” (III, iv, 79-81). He is saying this because he can see Banquo standing there and means when you used to kill somebody they would stay dead and not come back to haunt you. Then the ghost vanishes and they have a toast and drink some wine then the ghost reappears and Macbeth says this, “ Avaunt! And quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee!/ Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;/ Thou hast no speculation in those eyes/ Which thou dost glare with” (III, iv, 94-97). He wants the ghost to leave because he is dead and his bones are marrowless and his blood is cold. At the end of the play Macbeth has lost all touch with reality. Macbeth is inside the castle at Dunsinane and has just been alerted that there are soldiers in the distance. “ I have lived long enough. My way of life/ Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf,/ And that which should accompany old age,/ As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,/I must not look to have; but, in their stead,/ Curses not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath,/ Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not (V, iv, 22-28). He is saying that he knows he is going to die during this fight and that he is in a withered state. Then after that Seyton enters to tell Macbeth that Lady Macbeth has died and then Macbeth says “ She should have died hereafter; There would have been time for such a word…” (V, v, 17-28). After hearing that his wife has just died, Macbeth doesn’t even seem to care about it at all he is worrying about his own fate. So at the end of the play Macbeth has totally lost it and gone insane, to the point that he isn’t even affected about the death of his wife. Which in the beginning of the play he would do anything she asked and you could tell he really loved her but in the end all these emotions were gone and he had nothing left. This goes to show you that when your sanity is gone you have nothing left.