Throughout literature, themes are exposed in many works through the characters, images or recurring ideas within a same book. An important matter in everyday life, evil is an abstraction often associated with darkness, cold, savagery, and death. In Macbeth, Shakespeare develops many themes, such as ambition or the supernatural, which all revolve around the nature of the ever-present evil within the play. The characters of the witches, Lady Macbeth and her husband, along with the various images used, all represent the different aspects of evil that are unfolded during the story.
To begin with, the play is embellished by many images which actually foreshadow or represent the ever-present evil. Firstly, characters often remark on the weather or the sky when evil is going to happen or has already. Indeed, after Duncan's murder, Lenox speaks of the strange happenings of the night:.
"The night has been unruly: where we lay,.
Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,.
Lamentings heard i" the air; strange screams of death,.
And prophesying with accents terrible.
Of dire combustion, and confused events,.
New hatched to the woeful time.
The obscure bird clamoured the livelong night:.
Some say the earth was feverous, and did shake." (Shakespeare, II.iii.49-56).
These unfamiliar events show that nature has already reacted to the murderous deed. The weather's excessive reaction to the act exposes its evil: it is so evil that none of the characters has ever seen such horrible consequences. Lenox tells Macbeth that his "young remembrance cannot parallel/ A fellow to it" (II.iii.58-59). This would not mean so much as he is obviously young; however, the old man, representative of the people, can neither remember such a drastic night: "Threescore and ten I can remember well;/ Within the volume of which time I have seen/ Hours dreadful and things strange, but this sore night/ Hath trifled former knowings" (II.iv.1-4).
