Macbeth Quote Analysis

Macbeth enters the witches' cave and immediately addresses them, demanding to know what they are doing with the cauldron.

Macbeth piles up three adjectives before even naming the witches—'secret, black, and midnight'—all evoking concealment and darkness, yet he is the one who has sought them out in a cave at night. His language projects onto them the very qualities that now define his own actions, as if he needs to frame them as wholly other even as he willingly steps into their world.

Support a thesis that Macbeth's language reveals his psychological need to externalize evil—by calling the witches 'black' and 'secret' he can pretend he is still separate from the darkness he has chosen to inhabit.