Theme Of Mental Illness In Macbeth

A simple plot to overthrow King Duncan and secure the kingdom for themselves and their lineage turned into a mental race the Macbeths couldn’t win. Plagued from the start, the stresses and anxiety were too much for the couple to handle- falling down a steady slope into madness neither could escape the mental illnesses creeping into their lives and were oblivious to the reality of the situations and their reactions to them. The stress and fear of getting caught killing King Duncan was the first line of sanity to snap in Macbeth leading him into paranoid schizophrenia, whereas the guilt and weight of the king’s death lead Lady Macbeth into a fatal fight with PTSD. Macbeth was originally held in high regard by the king and his court, “For brave
Macbeth-well he deserves that name-/disdaining fortune, with his brandish’d steel,/”(Act 1.2). He was a loyal man and had the witches not influenced his actions he would have remained loyal to the king. Macbeth was not comfortable with killing him and couldn’t go through with planning it so his wife did and through outside influences and the harsh words of her; he went through with it. Not without a serious consequence though- the fear of getting caught and the build up of paranoia caused a psychotic break, At this point in the story Macbeth begins hallucinating and having delusions.
“Is this a dagger which I see before me,/the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee./ I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.”(Act 2.1) The dagger isn’t really there and it seemingly guides him to Duncan’s bedside where he promptly stabs him, From then on out Macbeth falls more and more into paranoia thinking everybody is out to get him, this paranoia leads him to distrust his right hand man and through fear has him killed, while Fleance had escaped unintendedly. After killing Banquo his delusions get worse to the point where he sees and yells at his ghost at dinner and his wife plays it off as him being sick. “Here had we now our country’s honour roof’d,/Were the graced person of
our Banquo present;”(Act 3.4); his paranoia and schizophrenic tendencies increases throughout the play to where he continues seeing and hearing things that aren’t there, and becomes quickly distrusting of almost everybody because in his eyes everybody wants to kill him; which leads him to become more violent, “The castle of Macduff I will surprise,/Seize upon Fife,/ give to th' edge o' th' sword /His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls/That trace him in his line[...]” (Act 4.1) In the beginning all Macbeth wanted to do was kill the king and take the crown for himself, but, at this point anybody and everybody is in the way of his sword and he’s ready to kill. Lady Macbeth took a harder fall than he did, eventually killing herself to escape the overpowering guilt that consumed her, the ordeal of killing the king and replacing the daggers herself scared her so bad she ended up with PTSD, after returning the dagger she commented, “My hands are of your colour, but I shame/ To wear a heart so white[...]/ A little water clears us of this deed:” (Act 2.2) In this instance she looks down on Macbeth for feeling bad about the deed and says she would be ashamed to have a heart like this, and claims water washes away their guilt like it washes away the blood, but throughout the play she becomes more obsessed with the spot of blood on her hand, that won’t go away no matter how many times she scrubs and washes it, while consulting with a doctor she remarks “Out, damned spot!
out, I say!” (Act 5.1). and is in an aggravated state talking about Banquo’s ghost, reliving the experiences of it all, “Here’s the smell of the blood to still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!”( Act 5.1) The traumatic experiences that followed her and Macbeth were too much for her psyche to handle and pushing away the guilt, being the stronger one out of the two pushed her too far, throughout the play she repeatedly exhibits signs and symptoms of PTSD ultimately ending up in depression and her suicide; hyperarousal in the form of not sleeping- the doctor she consulted with tells Macbeth, “ As she is troubled with thick-coming
fancies,/ That keep her from rest.”(Act 5.3) and being agitated, nobody could help her, or knew what was wrong- and she had no open outlet to express everything, she held everything in until she couldn’t take it anymore and the flashbacks and reexperiencing of it all and the smell of blood pushed her over the edge. The Macbeths held in high regard fell down a slippery slope into madness together, but separately, both too consumed in their own worlds and selfish gains to notice what was wrong with the other. The quest for power drove Macbeth into paranoid Schizophrenia and the guilt of it all and overpowering emotions and experiences drove Lady Macbeth into Post traumatic stress disorder and both gave into these illnesses and ultimately their demise was made by them.