In Macbeth, there is a recurrent and patterned set of images that are all thematically functional. The most prominent image is that of blood, beginning from Lady Macbeth's;s reference to killing her child by smashing its head at the time of breast-feeding to Macbeth's imagination of the horrid bloody dagger, air borne to the famous speech about an enormous pool of blood that turns 'the green one red' with its 'multitudinous seas' incarnadined. Lady Macbeth's reference to the smells of blood in the sleep-walking scene is another instance.
Milk or milking has reference to a process of natural/biological nourishing, described throughout the play. The human action is seen to go against this natural process, wrecking great violence, which leads to Lady Macbeth's image of killing her own child or the image of milk falling into hell. There is a chaotic infiltration into the heavenly milk of harmony.
Sleep is another crucial image, associated with the order of the natural and the normal, transgressed by the act of Macbeth and his wife. The series of images on sleep as spoken by Macbeth in the murder scene establishes it as the great comforting process of nature. Macbeth is denied sleep as the voice of guilt speaks out of him. Later on, it is Lady Macbeth sharing this burden of disturbed sleep.
Fear is another recurrent image in the play. From the fearful image of Duncan's murder that unfixes Macbeth in the temptation scene to the ghost of Banquo as an image of dread to the declassed fearlessness of the deteriorated Macbeth as the king who instructs to hang all those who speak of fear--it is yet another trajectory of decline from the natural, connoted through the development of the image.
No comments:
Post a Comment