The Macbeths Sleeplessness, Essay Example

In the beginning of the play, Macbeth was one of the strongest and most loyal of King Duncan’s supporters. After he meets the witches, every thought of what he can do for the king is replaced by the thoughts of what he can do for himself. As he considers this possibility, he must turn sleeplessly deciding what to do and sleepless later as he realizes that he murdered a good king and man out of greed. Lady Macbeth always appears just in time to calm him enough to move toward what she says must be done. As he loses more sleep, the reader realizes that his conscience wins over his sanity and that he doomed himself not just in committing the murder but also in choosing to do it to a sleeping man, his friend. Sleeplessness is a symptom of his troubled conscience, and the cause of his increasing madness, but the guilt of the murder lies at the heart of it all. Sleep is the “death of each day’s life”, so Macbeth lives the day of that murder without end. (Delaney 210)

In Act 2, Scene 2 of Macbeth, Macbeth had already killed the king Duncan. His own conscience questions him about the betrayal, asking, “But wherefore could I not produce ‘amen’?”  and calls his own hands “a sorry sight”. (Macbeth 2.2.1-31) His hands become the two sides of his conscience: the one that called laughs at the murder tries to soothe him back to sleep and the one that calls it murder. He cannot bring these two separate hands together for the ‘Amen’, the final word of offering prayer to God, because he knows deep-down how he feels about the murder. Suffering from guilt, Macbeth’s nightmares trouble his sleep. This only makes his unstable actions worse, as his sleeplessness keeps him from making stable decisions and leaves him with more fears and dependence on the witches’ prophecies for his sense of safety. By Act 2, the reader knows that Macbeth would never be happy once he heard the witches’ words. The murder of the king means there is no turning back. It seems that even Macbeth’s dreams tease him with this point. He explains: “Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep’, the innocent sleep,” and the witches’ prophecies echo like curses in his dreams.” This sleep brings the innocence and a fresh conscience, like an infant. (Delaney 211) King Duncan slept innocently when the murder was committed, so Macbeth’s sleeplessness balances the bad karma of being so disloyal and cowardly. If Macbeth would kill the king like that, then what would Lady Macbeth do, the very lady who said she would kill her own child for the kingdom.

Even Lady Macbeth quickly realizes the mental and emotional state of her husband. She thinks simply and scolds him almost like a child, her words foreshadowing his madness when she warns: “You unbend your noble strength, to think so brainsickly of things.” (Macbeth 2.2) In other words, not only does Macbeth think too much, but his brain is not working properly under the weight of his guilt. His wife, as revealed by the conversations she has with the son, believes that Macbeth is only a husband, yet even she is overwhelmed. While she sleeps through the night, she is cursed with sleepwalking, always wondering through the halls at night. She hallucinates and kills herself just as Birnam Wood begins to walk, as the witches had told Macbeth it would. (Macbeth 5.1)

In Act 3 scene 2 in characterized by images of restlessness. Macbeth is more independent and no longer comfortable in his part in the evil. Macbeth sleeps “in the affliction of those terrible dreams that shakes us nightly” and envies the cleanness of Duncan’s death and “after life’s fitful frenzy he sleeps well”. (Macbeth 3.2)  In the end, even though Macbeth would not lay down for an easy death, he must secretly wish for the frenzy of his own life to end. His wife died, he cannot sleep, and he cannot win the kingdom that he sold his soul for.

Works Cited

Delaney, Bill. “Shakespeare’s Macbeth.” Explicator 63.4 (2005): 209-211. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 May 2014.

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. An Electronics Classic Series Publication. 1999. Web.