macbeth ambition

Question 1

what is the main theme in ambition?

Answer 1

it always leads to downfalls

Question 2

a little water clears us of this deed. how easy is it then!

Answer 2

• ‘water’ connotes to innocence and purity
  ↳LM is trying to wash away or purify her sins
• adjective ‘little’ emphasises her naivety
  ↳not realising the gravity of her actions
• the exclamation mark suggests she is confident and sure that everything is going to work
• it could be signposting her refusal and her lack of awareness of her situation
• she is very ambitious at this point in the play so she simplifies everything
  (contrast to later in the play)

Question 3

what, will these hands ne’er be clean?

Answer 3

• rhetorical question suggests her emotional distress. she is unsure and nervous
  ↳emphasises femininity
  ↳regret
• ‘ne’er’ suggests she fears she will feel guilty and stressed forever
• the verb ‘clean’ suggests she feels dirty and contaminated by the blood and the sin of regicide
• suggests her getting back her femininity

Question 4

will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood from my hand?

Answer 4

• the noun ‘Neptune’ refers to the roman god of sea
  ↳he has control of the sea of the world
• M’s rhetorical question suggests that it will take all the water in the world
• noun ‘blood’ symbolic of guilt and sin
• he knows the guilt cannot be washed away

Question 5

I have supp’d full with horrors; direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, cannot once start me

Answer 5

• the verb ‘supp’d’ means drank
  ↳implies he has consumed/ or witnessed many ‘horrors’ meaning terrible acts
• the noun ‘direness’ means awfulness
  ↳awful things are too familiar to his mind
• a mind full of ‘slaughterous thoughts’
  ↳brutal murder of innocent people
• ‘cannot start me’
  ↳nothing can frighten him now because he is numb
• M experiences synesthesia and he has become desensitised
• this leads to him doing even more bad things and ends up in a bad ending