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Iyanna Wills

Ms. Coalter

Language Arts IV

11 March 2019

Getting Away With Murder

In society, many have disorders or go through traumatic events that cause them to change

the way they act, which causes raging emotions inside to the point they cannot deal with their

problems. In the play ​Macbeth​, it is a play on the betrayal and wanting and yearning of power. In

this play, Macbeth wants power, even though he is already respected he wants more power when

he hears of a prophecy by three witches. In hearing this, the Thane of Cawdor is killed and

Macbeth is promoted, in being promoted he tells his wife and she starts making plans to be

greedy and for the both of them to have more power. In ​Macbeth​, Lady Macbeth demonstrates

signs of not only the Lady Macbeth effect, but PTSD by dealing with the murder and killings of

King Duncan through showing signs of guilt and shame.

Lady Macbeth formulates a plan to try and kill King Duncan so that Macbeth and her can

gain more power in the ranks. During Lady Macbeth being told that Macbeth was being

promoted, she felt fit that he be promoted even more so they could have even more power. In

trying to commit murder, she says she does not want to kill King Duncan so instead sends

Macbeth to kill him because she thinks Duncan looks like her father. In the article ​Damned Spot:

Guilt, Scrubbing, and More Guilt​, APS demonstrates, “Cleaning-- and especially hand

scrubbing-- is important both practically and symbolically. Sufferers are just as likely to scrub

away ‘dirty thoughts’ as actual dirt, and their feelings of personal pollution are exacerbated by
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guilt and shame and disgust” (Damned Spot: Guilt, Scrubbing, and More Guilt). In killing

Duncan, Macbeth is panicking because he killed more than just Duncan he had to kill the guards

too because he was afraid that they would wake up in the middle of him committing murder.

Lady Macbeth urges Macbeth to get rid of his guilt and shame from what he has done. She

pushes him to get over what he has done faster. She felt by being able to wash one’s hands, one

could move on from what was done and continue having a normal life. In a way she did move on

from it and continue with her daily life, or at least had a decent way of showing that she was over

what happened by being able to help Macbeth cover his tracks.

Lady Macbeth tells Macbeth to wash his hands of the blood, but ends up hallucinating

herself about having blood on her hands and needing to wash them off. Macbeth feels he cannot

wash his hands because he feels that he cannot just hide what he has done because he knows he

did it and he cannot just get on from that. In the play, Macbeth says, “

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather

The multitudinous seas incarnadine” (2.2.75-77). In Macbeth coming back from murdering

Duncan she tells Macbeth to wash his hands of the blood to get rid of the evidence but he cannot.

She wants him to do this to get rid of the horrible act he has done. Even though he cannot do it,

she still pushes him to get rid of the blood and to wash away his hands because in a way she feels

that what he has done is not a big deal. The cleaning of the hands demonstrates trying to get rid

of the dirtiness of what has taken place, so in washing the hands or ridding of the dirt, essentially

the deed will be forgotten and can technically be moved on from because the hands were washed

clean of the traces of blood.

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Lady Macbeth goes mad with trying to help Macbeth deal with him killing Duncan and

trying to cover his tracks. There are many instances in the play where Macbeth slips up and tells

that he has killed Duncan or alludes to the conclusion that he has killed King Duncan. In

knowing what she planned, even though she did not commit the murder, she still has trouble

stomaching what she had Macbeth do because he has hard times continuing with his life because

he has visions. In the play ​Macbeth​, Lady Macbeth states, “

To bed, to bed. There’s knocking at the gate. Come,

come, come, come, give me your hand. What’s done

cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed” (5.1.73-75). Lady Macbeth demonstrates

PTSD here because she has come to the point where she technically cannot function in her daily

life. One of the symptoms of PTSD is not being able to function in daily life activities, and she

gets to the point where she gets sick in a way because she feels tremendously guilty because she

helped start a cycle of killing and death in Macbeth. In the article ​Dream of Oedipus: Freud’s

interpretation of Macbeth​, Timberman says, “Eventually these nagging feelings of guilt overtake

her and reduce her to the sleepwalking figure that is seen in Act 5. The constant washing of her

hands is her mind’s way of ridding herself of that guilt” (Timberman). This demonstrates how

knowing what Lady Macbeth had done and set up sent her into a world of guilt because she

wanted to try and wash her hands because she felt with washing hands the guilt or what had been

done could easily be forgotten. So to Lady Macbeth washing of hands got rid of the act done, but

in reality it did not because she still struggled with the guilt and still struggled slowly with trying

to continue on with her daily life normally as if nothing happened. Slowly Macbeth started to not

be able to function properly with his everyday life, and as he was dealing with it, she was trying
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to forget it as well, but it only got worse because she was guilty and nothing could rid her of the

guilt, until she killed herself.

In conclusion, Lady Macbeth suffers from the Lady Macbeth effect and PTSD throughout

the play. In ​Macbeth​, Lady Macbeth demonstrates signs of not only the Lady Macbeth effect, but

PTSD by dealing with the murder and killings of King Duncan through showing signs of guilt

and shame. Lady Macbeth easily got over planning the killing of Duncan, or at least showed she

did, by being fame and rank hungry. Lady Macbeth shows multiple signs of guilt and shame

within dealing with trying to wash her hands multiple times, even though she was not the one

that commit the murder. She eventually goes mad because she can no longer hold in the guilt and

shame she feels inside. One batting with PTSD can no longer go on with their daily life as they

usually do because it is hard to forget about the traumatic event that happened, or that was

caused, which causes one to go cray in the mind and causes them to take extreme measures to get

rid of the guilt.

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Works Cited

Shakespeare, William, and Bernard Groom. Macbeth. Oxford University Press, 1995.

Timberman, Heather. “I Dream of Oedipus: Freud’s Interpretation of Macbeth.” ​Gender Roles of

Women in the Renaissance.

Herbert, Wray. “Damned Spot: Guilt, Scrubbing, and More Guilt.” ​Association for Psychological

Science,​ 29 Mar. 2013.