Macbeth is a Shakespearean play that is rich with literary motifs. These motifs are complicated. However, they can be described as relating to guilt and the dark human urgings of the subconscious. The motifs that stem from these themes in Macbeth include the following:
Light, darkness, and sight;
Blood;
Sleep;
Birds of ill omen;
Hands; and
Unnaturalness
In this article, we will first define what a motif means before providing a brief summary and analysis of Macbeth. Then, we will explain each of the relevant motifs in Macbeth and how they link to the wider themes of the play.
What is a motif?
A motif is an image, sound, word, or concept that is repeated throughout a particular work of literature. Motifs are typically related to the wider themes of the work.
When analyzing literature, you should pay attention to repeated patterns and take note of them. Try to see how these motifs relate to the wider themes or points of the story.
Motifs are a literary device that should not be mistaken for symbols or themes. Symbols are more complete and whole than motifs. For example, in Mathew Arnold’s “Philomela” (1853), the nightingale is a symbol of eternal human passion and pain, represented by the passionate singing of a nightingale:
Listen, Eugenia—
How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves!
Again—thou hearest?
Eternal passion!
Eternal pain!
This symbol is not even unique to Matthew Arnold’s poem. It occurs throughout classical Greek literature and premodern European literature and is rooted in the Greek myth of Philomela. In Macbeth, birds also feature frequently.
However, they are motifs associated with ill omen and unnaturalness, not symbols. For example in Act 1, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth comments on a raven she hears after receiving news that King Duncan will visit the Macbeth household:
The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.
Lady Macbeth plans to use this visit as an opportunity to murder Duncan in his sleep. She is associating the raven's cry as an omen of the dark fate that awaits King Duncan.
A summary and analysis of Macbeth
Macbeth is a tragedy by William Shakespeare that tells the story of a Scottish nobleman whose ambition leads to his downfall. Macbeth encounters three witches who prophesy that he will become king. Encouraged by his wife, Lady Macbeth, he murders King Duncan while the king sleeps as a guest in the Macbeth home.
He then seizes the throne and goes on to commit even more atrocities because of his insecurity and paranoia at seizing power through such foul means. These atrocities include murdering the wife and infant son of a rival general, Macduff.
Lady Macbeth, who at the beginning of the conspiracy to murder Duncan was so sure of herself while her husband was full of trepidation, descends into guilt and madness and commits suicide. Macbeth's tyranny provokes rebellion, led by Macduff and Malcolm, Duncan's son.
There is a final battle, in which Macbeth is killed by Macduff, and Malcolm ascends the throne, restoring order to Scotland. In short, we can say that Macbeth is a medieval, action-packed, gothic horror fantasy. I guess.
Motifs in Macbeth
The motifs in Macbeth are closely related to themes of moral corruption and decay. This idea is first announced in Act 1, Scene 1 by the Weird Sisters:
Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.
This is an announcement of morality being turned upside down throughout the play. Duncan is eventually murdered by Macbeth as he is hosted and sleeps a guest in Macbeth’s home. This is a grave violation of all moral and humane conventions. This paves the way for our first theme — Unnaturalness.
1. Unnaturalness as a motif
Motifs of unnaturalness occur throughout the play. One of the more extreme examples is Lady Macbeth’s monologue, in Act 1, Scene 5, which can be described as a prayer to demons to steel her for the murder she’s about to commit against Duncan:
The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. 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. Make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever, in your sightless substances,
You wait on nature's mischief. Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry 'Hold, hold.'
Lady Macbeth is asking to be made unnatural. She says “unsex me here.” She is asking for her female instincts of tenderness and mercy to be suppressed. She wants “no compunctious visitings of nature” to shake her purpose.
This theme of unnaturalness is further enhanced by the sightings of ghosts and other apparitions that occur throughout the play. The motif of birds are also used to enforce this theme. Let’s look at an example in Act 3, Scene 4, when the ghost of Banquo, a friend whom Macbeth has murdered appears:
MACBETH
Prithee, see there. Behold, look!
[To the Ghost]:
Lo, how say you?
Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too.—
If charnel houses and our graves must send
Those that we bury back, our monuments
Shall be the maws of kites. [Ghost exits.]
The appearance of a ghost is unnatural enough. However, Macbeth makes reference to the “maws of kites” being the monuments or graves of the dead. The irony lies in the fact that Banquo has no grave. He was murdered and left in a ditch as explained by the murderers hired by Macbeth:
Ay, my good lord. Safe in a ditch he bides,
With twenty trenchèd gashes on his head,
The least a death to nature.
The maws of kites suggest unnatural death in warfare and murder, where slain soldiers remain scattered on the field unburied. Kites are carrion birds that feed on decaying flesh, such as the flesh of dead men left in ditches without graves.
The Weird Sisters also predict that Macbeth cannot die of any man born of a woman. However, he is killed by Macduff who was born via caesarean section. It’s as if the unnatural acts of immorality committed by Macbeth can only be balanced out by a man who is also born of unnatural means.
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Motifs associated with guilt
The other set of motifs in Macbeth is associated with guilt. This includes:
Sleep;
Light, darkness, and sight;
Hands; and
Blood.
Duncan is murdered in her sleep. He is an innocent, kind, and graceful king who is killed for putting faith in the hospitality of a trusted general. Sleep is associated with innocence and a moral sense of guilt throughout the play. This is made explicit in Act 2, Scene 2 when Macbeth murders Duncan and hears voices:
Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep, — the innocent sleep;
Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
This suggests that Macbeth will never have another night of restful sleep because of the crime he has committed. Lady Macbeth in her monologue praying to demons says:
. . .Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry 'Hold, hold.'
She is asking for darkness to cover up her crime. In the process, she equates hell with darkness and heaven with night and a lack of sight. However, later in the play, we see her sleepwalking, expressing a tremendous amount of guilt in the part that she played in murdering Duncan. The same innocent sleep under which Duncan rested as he was killed is now responsible for “compunctious visitings of nature” on Lady Macbeth.
In fact, under the power of sleep, she confesses all her crimes and expresses remorse:
Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1:
Here's the smell of the blood still: all the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
hand. Oh, oh, oh!
A doctor and a gentlewoman watch and listen as she confesses her crime in a weird episode where she reenacts the conversation between her husband and herself on the night they decided to murder Duncan. She does all this while sleepwalking. In short, the humanity that Lady Macbeth tried to unnaturally suppress has now found an outlet in innocent sleep.
Light and darkness also feature heavily as motifs. Lady Macbeth asks for “thick night” for help so “that my keen knife not see the wound it makes.” It is remarkable that during her sleepwalking episodes that she uses a candle to light her way as she unknowingly confesses her crime and expresses remorse.
In Act 5, Scene 1 where Lady Macbeth is shown sleepwalking, the gentlewoman lets us know that Lady Macbeth has requested for a light to be by her side always. This suggests that her subconscious under the strain of guilt is working to light her toward a path of remorse. Again, we see light being associated with morality.
Lastly, we come to the motifs of hands and blood. One of the most famous quotes in Macbeth is related to these motifs.
Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2:
Whence is that knocking?
How is't with me, when every noise appals me?
What hands are here? ha! they pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red
Macbeth has just murdered Duncan and is now wracked with guilt. His guilt is so immense that at the sight of his bloodied hands, he claims to be blinded with the phrase “Ha! They pluck out mine eyes.” He even goes as far as imagining that his hands would turn the sea red with his guilt instead of his hands ever being clean from the stain of blood.
This is reflected in Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene, where she says:
Here's the smell of the blood still: all the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
hand. Oh, oh, oh!
What can we make of the motifs in Macbeth? It can be said that the motifs in Shakespeare’s play all point to the guilt that results as a consequence of repressing human nature and our sense of morality.
Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2024, December 9). Understanding Literary Motifs Through an Analysis of Macbeth. EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/understanding-literary-motifs-through-an-analysis-of-macbeth |
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