Explanation of Graph:

As can be seen in the graph above, as the play Macbeth progresses, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth experience a virtually complete shift in their characters. At point A (Act 1, Scene 5), Lady Macbeth begins plotting to exploit the opportunity of having King Duncan stay at their house by murdering him, thereby giving Macbeth the throne. At first, Macbeth is entirely repulsed by the mere idea of doing so, but after Lady Macbeth promises to plan out the entire assassination for him, Macbeth relents and agrees to help her.

At point B (Act 2, Scene 2), Macbeth has already begun to feel the effects guilt is having on him by hallucinating that he is seeing a bloody dagger leading him to Duncan’s room. He is about to back down when Lady Macbeth insults his manhood, calling him a coward and claiming that if she were not a woman, she would have already killed Duncan. Macbeth carries out the murder, but the guilt he feels towards the act of murder causes him to act foolishly, which can be seen through his forgetting to leave the daggers with the guards to frame them for Duncan’s murder until Lady Macbeth’s reminder, and also causes him to begin his decent into madness. He becomes frantic, claiming that the blood on his hands would turn all the oceans of the world red if he tried to wash it off, which Lady Macbeth writes off as weakness.

By point C (Act 3, Scene 2), however, both characters have a conversation in which they admit that they are no longer comfortable with having committed murder. Lady Macbeth claims that their ascendency to royalty has brought her no happiness as she had planned, but rather has only brought her guilt and fear that someone will catch onto them as the real killers. Macbeth shares her fear of being caught, and has by this point already sent three murderers to kill Banquo, who he fears knows his true motives. As the only other witness to the prophecies of the witches, Banquo could connect the facts and realize that Macbeth was attempting to fulfill the prophecy that he would become king. While Macbeth’s hallucination of Banquo’s ghost at his banquet displays the sense of guilt he feels over having him killed, rather than deter him from future immorality, it cements Macbeth’s paranoia.

By point D (Act 4, Scene 1), Macbeth’s paranoia has become full-tilt, encouraging him to send murderers to kill Macduff’s entire family in an attempt to stop the witches’ prophecy that Macduff would cause his downfall.

Point E (Act 5, Scene 5) represents the culmination of the swapping of their identities. Lady Macbeth’s guilt over her past murders leave her completely insane, sleepwalking and attempting to wash away a hallucination of blood that she sees on her hands, and eventually causes her to presumably kill herself.

This adds an ironic twist to her original position, as she had once chided Macbeth for being repulsed by the sight of blood on his hands, believing that washing off the blood was all it would take to remove their guilt. Macbeth at this point understands that he is going to die and though he had initially began to fight in the siege of his castle, he begins to despair. When faced with fighting Macduff, Macbeth’s guilt reaches a point he cannot surmount, claiming he has already killed too many people in Macduff’s family. Though he does defend himself from his attacks, it becomes clear that Macbeth has lost the murderous edge that brought him to this point. Though Macbeth and Lady Macbeth do swap roles, in the end, they are both consumed and destroyed by their guilt.

by Carter White