MACBETH Two Quote Paragraph

After the sudden suicide of Lady Macbeth, Macbeth falls into a deep pit of despair. With the death of his wife, Macbeth now has nothing to live for and has lost all his humanity. Shakespeare describes his like by saying ‘tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow’. His is using repetition to compare Macbeth’s life as a laborious task, with no purpose. Everything he held dear to him has been lost, and his kingship now means nothing, as soldiers and noblemen alike have rejected his rule, and the ones Macbeth still commands are held there by fear. He has nothing to live for, so each day is just another task that he must go through, and Macbeth now has nothing to achieve or gain from being alive. He lives a ghost life, and ‘tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow’ tells us this. The repetition enforces the sense of lifelessness and his lack of purpose. Shakespeare uses the line, ‘the last syllable of recorded time’. This metaphor is very interesting because it is referring to the play itself, and how all plays must end at some point, and that Macbeth’s own life will end with it. Although he does not know that he is just a character in a play, so this line is actually Shakespeare talking to the audience through Macbeth. The line itself is very powerful because this is almost Macbeth’s deep unconscious thoughts coming to the surface. The fact that he knows and strongly believes his life will be over is also a metaphor of humans, and how we would fall into despair and have a sense of helplessness if we knew of our upcoming death. He has nothing to live for, and his death is foreshadowed to occur. These factors would put Macbeth into a very strong sense of despair, as the character Macbeth as introduced to us in the start of the play is dead in all but name.