LRJ 3: Death

“Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers” (3.1, 33). Parricide is the killing of one’s parents, which is an awful thing and gives a very dark feel to this passage. “For them the gracious Duncan have I murdered,” (3.1, 67). Macbeth says this and by saying this he gives himself a darker more evil character because he has now admitted to murdering Duncan. “Which in his death were perfect” (3.1, 109). Death is just used for the definition here. “Better be with the dead,” (3.2, 21). Here the dead are referred to as people that time can be spent with giving them human characteristics. “Ay, and since too, murders have been performed/ too terrible for the ear. The time has been/ that, when the brains were out, the man would die,/ and there an end ; but now they rise again/ with twenty mortal murderers on their crowns,/ and push us from our stools. This is more strange/ than such a murder is” (3.4, 78-84). This passage is filled with references to death, dying and killers and all these references together make it dark and sort of scary with all the talk of death. The murders performed are described to be too terrible for ears meaning they are so awful that one would be pained to hear them. Also, it says that when someone dies there is an end; this is the first mention of this throughout the whole play. There is also talk of twenty murderers, which is twenty times more menacing and malicious and barbaric than just one murderer. “He shall spurn fate, scorn death,” (3.5, 30). This tells how Macbeth will reject death as if it isn’t inevitable. “Whom you may say, if’t please you, Fleance killed/ for Fleance fled. Men must not walk too late./ Who cannot want the thought how monstrous/ it was for Malcolm and for Doanlbain/to kill their gracious father?” (3.6, 6-10). This passage talks of sons killing their fathers, but in a way that says it is preposterous to think they killed their father because such an act is considered to be one of the worst crimes of all. “What ‘twere to kill a father” (3.6, 20). This enforces how bad it is to kill one’s father.