Value Of Life In Macbeth

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The value and impact of human life is a topic explored many times in literature, and is put into words especially memorably in the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare. In the fifth act of this play, Macbeth delivers a soliloquy on the meaninglessness of human life. The presentation of this excerpt is crucial to conveying both the tone and the theme to the audience. By writing the piece as a soliloquy rather than a dialogue between two characters or a narration, it gives the audience a sense of isolation while also giving them insight to Macbeth’s hidden thoughts. Abstract and difficult ideas like the value of human life in this excerpt are also expressed mostly through metaphors. Life is compared with a “brief candle”(V.v.24) and a “walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage” (V.v.26-27). …show more content…
In his soliloquy Macbeth muses the importance of life and death, and decides that life “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (V.v.28-30). Life for him has lost all meaning, and he seems to have lost hope in his life as well. He mentions that people will eventually make way “to dusty death” (V.v.24), a reference to the belief that man is created from dust. To Macbeth this belief represents the futility of human life, as people must disappear into what they came from, seemingly without a trace. The fleeting nature of life causes him to doubt it’s worth. If the outcome of each life is the same, then what occurs during life, to Macbeth, has no purpose. When he declares that life signifies nothing and that the fight to leave behind a legacy will be ultimately a failure he is also referring to his own quest for power. This is the point at which he has given up his goals, seeing them as an attempt at his futile desire to mean something after his

Motif Of Nature In Macbeth

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Shakespeare's Influence On Macbeth

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