Macbeth LRJ #5

Aaron Fernandez

10IB English

Ms. Peifer

March 4, 2009

1) A theme that Shakespeare makes very evident is that nothing good comes from committing sin.  That eventually the consequences will catch up to the sinner, and they will have to pay the price for their actions.  Lady Macbeth was a very strong woman, with a stern point of view, and she was very brave, but in the end all the murder that her and her husband committed was to much for her to take in, and she started to sleep walk.  She says in her sleep, " Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!"(5.1. 45-47).  Lady Macbeth has completely become insane she is now sleep walking, and expressing that there is nothing in this world that could clean her hands of the wrong she has done and all the bloodshed.  Shakespeare emphasizes to not commit sin, because at one point in life it will catch up to the sinner.  Shakespeare brings another theme to act five which is the act of sin is so strong that it can take away our souls, and emotions.  That a person who can have the heart to murder so many people, and kill without ever feeling remorse, will lose their soul, and become mindless of their surroundings.  Macbeth is saying to Sayton, " I have almost forgot the taste of fears; The time has been"( 5.5. 9- 10) Macbeth is explaining that the emotion of fear is not in his vocabulary anymore.  He has killed so much, and he has constantly committed wrong acts, that his soul is empty now, and he is full of misery.  Shakespeare's theme is to led the reader in the right path, and to explain that murder is incorrect and it will only destroy the mental state of being of a human.

2) Sleep is a important image pattern in Act five.  Lady Macbeth has not been able to sleep, and she sleep walks because she is so full of despair.  When she is awake she is afraid of saying the truth, but when she is asleep.  Macbeth at the beginning of the story after he has killed Duncan he says that he has murdered sleep, and that he will never sleep again because he disrupted someones sleep.  Lady Macbeth's sleep has now been disturbed.  The doctor tells the Gentlewoman, "This disease is beyond my practise: yet I have known those which have walked in their sleep who have died holily in their beds"(5.1. 59- 61).  The Doctor, and people around her are realizing that she has done, and that her sleep has been disrupted.  Sleep is a big image pattern throughout the story because so many characters are deprived of it.