Macbeth
Prompt #16 · Macbeth
Prompt Type: Character Arc
Trace the evolution of Macbeth's relationship with fear throughout the play, from his initial terror at the prophecies to his final claim that he has "almost forgot the taste of fears." Analyze how Shakespeare uses this progression to illustrate the dehumanizing effects of repeated violence. Explain how it contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.
Quote 1
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas incarnadine, / Making the green one red.”
Act II, Scene 2
Argument
This quote captures Macbeth's early baseline state immediately after Duncan's murder, where his fear manifests as visceral horror at his bloody hands. The hyperbolic imagery of blood staining all the oceans demonstrates his overwhelming terror and guilt at this initial stage of violence, establishing the starting point of his psychological transformation.
Quote 2
Act III, Scene 2
Argument
This quote represents a turning point in Macbeth's relationship with fear, showing how repeated violence has internalized his terror into constant mental torment. The metaphor of scorpions suggests fear has become a permanent, poisonous presence in his mind rather than an external reaction, marking his progression toward psychological numbness.
Quote 3
“I have almost forgot the taste of fears. / The time has been, my senses would have cool’d / To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair / Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir / As life were in’t. I have supp’d full with horrors; / Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, / Cannot once start me.”
Act V, Scene 5
Argument
This quote represents Macbeth's final state near the end of the play, where he explicitly claims to have 'almost forgot the taste of fears' after being 'supp'd full with horrors.' The contrast between his former sensitivity to 'night-shrieks' and his current inability to 'start' at direness illustrates the complete dehumanization achieved through his slaughterous career, fulfilling the arc from terror to emotional death.
Quote 4
“My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, / Shakes so my single state of man / That function is smother’d in surmise, / And nothing is but what is not.”
Act I, Scene 3
Argument
This quote captures Macbeth's early baseline state when murder is still 'but fantastical,' showing how even the thought of violence produces paralyzing fear that 'shakes so my single state of man.' The contrast with his later claim to have 'forgot the taste of fears' establishes the starting point of his arc, where fear still functions as a human response to contemplated evil.
Quote 5
“I am in blood / Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
Act III, Scene 4
Argument
This quote represents a crucial middle stage in Macbeth's arc where fear has transformed from moral terror into a pragmatic calculation about continuing violence. The metaphor of being 'stepp'd in so far' in blood reveals how repeated killing has made fear irrelevant—he continues not from courage but from the dehumanizing logic that more murder is no worse than what he's already done.