“Fair is foul and foul is fair”, this becomes the main theme of the playand a continuously running reality. It, for the most part, represents theimage of light and dark. In this play, most of the evil happenings takeplace in the dark. Macbeth murders King Duncan which was his first steptowards devastation. After the murder, peculiar things take place at night.
Macbeth starts feeling guilty; he gets restless and eventually startslosing his senses.
When, first of all, the witches tell Macbeth their prophecies, his desiressee hope but as soon as Lady Macbeth learns of this, she takes a certaindecision to get King Duncan out of their way. Macbeth, though, has the sameambition but here, Lady Macbeth makes him do something he is not mentallyready for, by directly challenging his manhood. “Come, you spirits thattend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me, from the crown totoe… (act1, scene5). He leaps into evilness first, when he performs themurder, the terror sets in. “But wherefore could not I pronounce ‘Amen’? Atthis point, it is seen that Macbeth is starting to fall apart as he seeshis fault. The murder was the stand to Macbeth’s demise. He does all thisto achieve happiness but despite of doing all he wanted to, he does not getwhat he longed for.
The night Macbeth kills King Duncan, many odd happenings take place. Thesehappenings were unnatural and strange. It seemed like nature’s order hadbeen disturbed and that the murder would bring about surplus changes. Thatnight was fierce. The winds were blowing away the houses and chimneys. Afalcon is killed by a mousing owl. Here, Shakespeare symbolized the king tobe the falcon killed by a hunting creature, that is, the owl, whichnormally preys on mice, and this owl symbolized Macbeth .Anotherdisturbance was Macbeth’s horses, which broke their stalls and ate eachother, this was something completely out of the order of nature. All thishappened at night, which particularly shows that darkness gives room toevil and is a hiding place for wrongdoers. It takes away happiness. Thesestrange happenings basically raise fear and suspense. The strange behaviourof the animals represents the lost of good tidings as the noble King Duncandies.
At the end, Macbeth starts losing his sleep which refers to night as a timeof darkness and darkness behind the eyes. His guilt slowly drives him outof his senses. After doing the deed, they fall victim to remorse and shame.
Lady Macbeth tries to cover up Macbeth for his peculiar actions. Though, inthe beginning, she seems like the stronger part of the pair but later herguilt takes over her senses and she discloses their deed whilesleepwalking. Her speech and actions raise curiosity and make the doctorand his maid very suspicious; “Unnatural deeds do breed unnaturaltroubles.” Macbeth and Lady Macbeth now seem to face a serious dilemma butMacbeth still does not stop here, he hires people to kill Banquo, and thisshows that one vice guides to another. His problems keep increasing andultimately lead him to death. On the other hand, Lady Macbeth drivesherself mad and commits suicide due to her guilt even before Macbeth dies,she was the main driving force behind Macbeth’s plays for power, shethought she was strong mentally and spiritually but in reality she weakensand accepts her defeat even before Macbeth.
Since all of Macbeth’s wrongdoings take place under the cover of darkness,the contrast of light and dark which symbolises goodness and evil, provesitself to be true. All in all, Macbeth gets trapped after performing thefirst murder and this slowly drags him into the world of blood. He wasreferred as the ‘noble’ and ‘kind’ Macbeth but it later changes to the’Black Macbeth’ and the ‘tyrant’ Macbeth. He could not stop himself fromgoing on the same path. “They say blood will have blood and it does.”(Act3, scene 4).
Word count: 687 including quotations
