Reacting to the murder in Macbeth:

Reacting to the murder in Macbeth:

Who’s the sane one now?

            King Duncan clearly did not take my advice to watch his back. However, I must admit that in some capacity I underestimated the goodness of Macbeth’s character, but I did not underestimate what he would do. He seemed as if he wouldn't, earlier on,  but whether by the convincing of others or by his own ambition overwhelming his originally mostly good nature, he did murder the king on that dark night, and now he will have to deal with the consequences. 

            Already he is swallowed by his own guilt; because of his guilt about his sin, "'Amen' stuck in [his] throat" even though he "had most need of blessing", and he even imagines that he "heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep'" repeatedly, for he feels he will never be able to sleep again, partly because of guilt and even partly because he will always fear being found out. Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, brushes the matter off like a spot of lint on her shoulder. In response to Macbeth's guilty moaning, she simply says, "these deeds must not be thought after these ways; [if] so, it will make us mad."

            But truly, which of them is the mad one now? Lady Macbeth is unnaturally without emotion, as if something is missing from her humanity. She should be even more distraught than her husband, because she thought that King Duncan "resembled [her] father as he slept" and so she could not stab him herself. Yet despite this, she is even confused when Macbeth expresses his guilt. When he tells her he can sleep no more for he has murdered sleep, she asks him, "what do you mean?". She just doesn't get it. Here is her husband, distraught at the murder he has just committed, and she is just looking at him and going, 'what's wrong with you?'. Really, he should be looking at her and going, 'what's wrong with you?'. She is insanely guiltless. Something in her mind, something in her moral conscience, is simply missing, and she is entirely too cool. 

            Macbeth is so distracted by his guilt and his horror at what he has done that he accidentally brings the murder weapons with him rather than planting them on the guards at the crime scene like he was supposed to, and when Lady Macbeth points out that he still has them and tells him to take them back and "smear the sleepy grooms with blood", he replies, "I'll go no more. I am afraid to think what I have done. Look on 't again I dare not." He is too guilty to go back and look at the bloody scene he has made. His wife, on the other hand, has no issues with going to a murder scene of a man who reminds her of her dad and dipping her hands in his bloody wounds to get some blood to smear on the guards she already drugged. She is entirely too unperturbed by the entire business. She chides Macbeth that he is “infirm of purpose!” when he refuses to go back and do this, and so she says she’ll go do it. She even tells Macbeth that “the sleeping and dead are as but pictures. ‘Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.” Stop being childish. He’s only dead. In this moment, she seems almost completely heartless. Macbeth is at least decent enough to regret what he has done; when they hear a knocking, he quietly tells it, “wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst.” But Macbeth has made his bed; murder is irreversible and inexcusable, and now he will have to face what he has brought on himself. We are glad today to be in our land beyond the violet mist and far removed from these horrific happenings.