Macbeth, By William Shakespeare - 1986 Words

Not All is as it Seems The crafty serpent appears next to Eve. The evil creature encourages her to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, which God had specifically warned her not to do. The woman, unaware of the serpent’s true intentions, eats from the tree and gives some to Adam. Eventually, the pair realizes that they have been deceived by the snake, and they are consequently exiled from paradise. Sometimes acts which appear honest and good are really meant to mask the hidden desires of wicked people. These desires often have irreversible repercussions, which only accelerate the degeneration of morals and character. Throughout William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the idea of murderous actions and their dire consequences establishes the†¦show more content†¦The idea of violence is brought up in each instance and too aids in the revelation of motive. In the play, Macbeth’s troubling hallucination of the bloody dagger reveals his secret longing to become king. Macbeth questions whether or not the dagger is a figment of his guilty conscious, stating, â€Å"Or art thou but / A dagger of the mind, a false creation, / †¦ There’s no such thing. / It is the bloody business which informs / thus to mine eyes† (2.1.37-49). Here it is evident that the dagger is a product of Macbeth’s imagination, and therefore there is a difference between what he sees and what is really there. Although it may seems as if the dagger symbolizes Macbeth’s guilt, it is more so a symbol of how Macbeth’s faà §ade differs so greatly from his true intentions. The reality which lies behind Macbeth’s will to kill the king, displays itself in the form of the ghostly dagger. When King Duncan first arrives at the Macbeths’ castle, they greet him with kind smiles and the foolish old man is all but unaware of the evil which resides in his hosts; this evil reveals itself in the form of the bloody dagger. The bloo d not only foreshadows the demise of Duncan, but unveils Macbeth’s inner demons and how he is really not the loyal kinsman he claims to be. The blood imagery present also assists in the development of the idea that the dagger, which literally leads Macbeth to kill the king, represents the lack of morals required to carry out such a deed. Hence, it