Why is blood used to create different images in Macbeth? The playwrite, William Shakespeare uses literary devices in Macbeth. He uses symbols to represent abstract ideas. One well-known example is his use of blood. It emerges throughout the play in various scenes, representing many characteristics. Shakespeare uses blood to symbolize killing, evidence, guilt and family, and life in his tragedy Macbeth. .
Shakespeare uses blood as killing, when Macbeth is going to kill Duncan. Macbeth imagines a bloody dagger in front of him, and squeezes the dagger, aiming towards Duncan's room. In this case, Macbeth states, "Is this the dragger which I see before me . . . and on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, which was not so before . . . It is bloody business, which now inform thus to mine eye." (Act 2, Scene 2 pg.54- 58 line 59 - 60) Blood represents killing. The symbol of blood also represents the dark side of Macbeth and death. Shakespeare most likely put this in to foreshadow murder and death. .
Another example in Shakespeare's Macbeth blood is that represents the evidence. Lady Macbeth, wife of Macbeth, shows the most strongest example of evidence using the symbol of blood in the scene. She says "Out damned spot! Out I say! One: two: why then 'tis time to do't: hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it when none can call out power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?"(Act 5 Scene 1 pg.163 line 37 - 42). This speech represents the fact that she cannot wipe the blood stains of Duncan off her hands. She says this right after the murder, when Macbeth was feeling guilty, and her guilty conscience grows stronger. She rubs the imaginary blood of her hands to rid herself of the guilt. Shakespeare proves that the symbol of blood has many different meanings.
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At the end of the play, Shakespeare shows the most vivid example of guilt using the symbol of blood.
