the technique i'm going to be talking to you about today is one that you have possibly never heard of or maybe have heard of but don't really know much about regardless of the position you're coming from it is an amazing technique for analyzing shakespeare and it is motif okay i've just pointed in completely the wrong direction a motif is a repeated image that has symbolic significance so there's two reasons why that this is an amazing technique to analyze the first is the fact that it has it's it's an image with symbolic significance symbolism is a really brilliant technique to analyze in text because it's entirely implicit and you have to show you understand the text on the deep level to understand symbolism that's their magnified by the fact that a motif is a repeated symbol and at the very top levels of english analysis is patterns spotting patterns and analyzing patterns it's everything at the top end of english analysis so motif is just like it's just top grade food being handed to you on a plate so what i'm going to be doing in this video is i'm going to be talking to you about the four biggest motifs that we see in shakespeare's macbeth i'm going to be telling you some key quotes that help to illustrate what it is you can say about these motifs but it's important for you to remember that i am not looking at every single quote that uses these symbols it would take way too long there's literally hundreds of references in the play to these different images so i can't possibly go through them all that's why an important step here is that in your revision you keep these motifs in mind you keep in mind what they can represent so that whenever you see the words come up in something that i didn't talk about you can still apply the knowledge and apply the analysis to that quote and it could help you come up with something really interesting to say in your essays so let's do this sleep is the first motif we're going to talk about and this quote i'm pointing in the wrong direction again aren't i this quote is a really great one for just being super obvious on the symbolic significance of sleep we're in act two scene two so macbeth has just killed king duncan and he says me thoughts i heard a voice cry sleep no more macbeth does murder sleep the innocent sleep sleep that knits up the rabble sleeve of care the death of each day's life sore labor's bath bomb of hurt minds great nature's second course chief nourisher in life's feast wow that's a lot of metaphors and a list there bomb of hurt minds that metaphor is basically uh highlighting the power of sleep to act as like a mental health support when we're feeling really conflicted when we're feeling really troubled that's again reinforced by the metaphor of sore labor's bath when you're going through a difficult time sleep gives you peace from that mental struggle from everything you've been going through physically and mentally in a day and so it's this idea of like things coming to an end the death of each day's life but the positive of that coming to an end is the rest and relaxation that you get from it so let's now then look at what he says at the top which is sleep no more macbeth does murder sleep interesting so obviously macbeth has actually just murdered king duncan not sleep so why have this personification of sleep we're saying that beth has murdered it well what it's essentially showing is that macbeth is aware that his actions have ruined his own mental health he's aware of how he is not going to be able to relax anymore he's always going to be emotionally troubled by what he has done and the reason he's going to be so emotionally troubled you can see in the language that the metaphor uses he's murdered it he's very aware of him causing his own problems and through the violent act that he has committed so if sleep symbolizes calm relaxation peace and macbeth has murdered that he is never again going to be at peace and he really hammers that message home in this scene when he says still it cried sleep no more to all the house glams have murdered sleep and therefore cordo shall sleep no more macbeth shall sleep no more it's interesting how he like runs through his different titles and it's like he starts with who he used to be which was just dane of glams and then who he is now thane of cordov and then it becomes much more personal with his first name macbeth shall sleep no more wait that's not even his first name is it that's still just his surname scottish nobility are weird what do you reckon beth's first name is dave point is what macbeth is really aware of immediately after killing king duncan is the fact that he is so troubled and wrapped with guilt over what he has done that he's not able to sleep another brilliant example of this for lady macbeth is the fact that the way her guilt manifests is via sleepwalking so even though technically she's asleep she's not asleep she can't sleep anymore she has lost the ability to sleep and of course when she's sleepwalking what she's doing is trying to clean the blood off her hands she's yelling out down spot she's essentially reliving that night over and over and over and over and over again so again the motif is sleep equals peace of mind lady macbeth also doesn't have any peace of mind so sleep really represents the the mental conflict that our characters go through light and dark the symbolic significance of light and dark is pretty classic light equals good dark equals bad um and we see that in this quote from act one scene three so uh this is now banquo and macbeth have just met the witches for the first time and they've just given macbeth uh the initial prophecies saying that he's going to be thane of corridor and he's going to be king and banquo warns him that the instruments of darkness tell us truths win us with honest trifles to betray us in deepest consequence in other words witches will tell us what we want to hear give us some good things so that they can later down the line betray us in a really bad way it's interesting though that banquo refers to the witches as the instruments of darkness now part of that is linked to the origin that the uh people at the time believed witches had which is that they worked for the devil okay they were like the devil's minions and so in that sense the instruments of darkness is referring to them as like working for the devil so darkness is essentially being uh associated with evil and the devil there and we can see that again in act three scene two and we've got this quote from macbeth so this time he's killed king duncan now and now he's talking about killing banquo and he says come ceiling night scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day and with thy bloody and invisible hand cancel and tear to pieces that great bond which keeps me pale macbeth is calling on night to cover day so with our light and dark symbolic meaning of light being goodness rightness morality dark being evil the supernatural the devil the fact that macbeth is calling on night deliberately to uh get rid of day is really significant because it shows the loss of his moral compass now especially like this late into the play after all the um the fact that he's killed king duncan and the fact that he's about to go murder banquo it really shows that loss of moral compass from macbeth and that he is now calling on the supernatural he's calling on evil through that imperative of come to come and help him we've also got the really violent way he's asking it to be done with thy bloody and invisible hand cancel and tear to pieces that great bond which keeps me pale now that great bond which keeps me pale there's two ways of interpreting this okay and if you watch my videos before you know that we like the fact that there's multiple ways of interpreting it because that means we get to talk about multiple things in our essays and show off how clever we are um so the first way of interpreting it is the great bond is his friendship with banquo that's what he wants he wants the knight to come and essentially get rid of the uh friendship he has with banquo the connection the relationship he's the care he feels for banquo which makes him afraid to go ahead with killing banquo which keeps me pale another way of viewing it is that the great bond is not macbeth and banquo it's banquo and his children one day becoming king that's the bond he wants broken oh and that is the bond that macbeth is afraid of the fact that the witch's prophecy said bancro's sons would be king now of course when you have those really different interpretations there's then really different ways that we can analyze this light and dark imagery because if the great bond is his friendship with banquo then what we can analyze there is essentially that macbeth isn't like a naturally evil person there's goodness in him he cares about banquo and he has to actively ask for help to have that goodness in him essentially removed and gotten rid of on the other hand if what he sees is that great bond being banquo's i guess right to the throne via his descendants by his children then actually what macbeth is doing is he's showing it's not about love it's not about friendship it's not about goodness it's about ambition it's about power and therefore that's like what is driving and pushing macbeth in all things that's all he cares about that's all he's afraid of is losing power is what he's afraid of and all he wants is the gaining of power so there's two really different ways of looking at that either way the light and dark imagery are important in conveying that he knows that this ambition this desire to get rid of his friendship with banquo is like he needs evil in order to do it and uh that therefore requires getting rid of the good light but again just that violent way at which he wants it to be done speaks to obviously macbeth has been violent since the very start of the play um but just how much that violence is is interweaving into just everything he feels and thinks now violence is just a first gut instinct to him so this one is said by malcolm in act four scene three that's when he's playing playing the uh psychological war games with macduff and trying to pretend he's a terrible king to see how mcduff will respond but then he does the big reveal of actually he's this like perfect virgin who's never done a bad thing in his in his entire life um and he gives this quote to mal uh he gives this quote to mcduff oh my god there's too many m's in this play like could shakespeare not have called at least one person dave and done us all a favor seriously anyway he gives this quote as a means of making a point of how even good people can become bad by saying angels are bright still though the brightest spell that's a reference to the devil's origin story if you will um the devil lucifer was originally one of god's favorite angels one of the best angels and i'm not going to pretend i can remember exactly what lucifer did i'm pretty sure it had something to do with him wanting more power than he's supposed to have in his position um but don't quote me on that um but he did something that led to him falling from grace and then becoming the devil so what we can take from that is again the idea of lightness and darkness with lightness representing good darkness representing bad hands hands are a really important symbol in macbeth in representing action and responsibility and we can see that in this quote i keep pointing in the wrong direction we can see that in this quote uh from act two scene two of macbeth where he has just killed king duncan and he's feeling really guilty and he says we'll all great neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand no this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas in incardeen making the green one red in other words well all neptune's ocean washed the blood from my hand no my hands will turn the entire sea red this is showing his guilt because essentially it's like the blood is representing guilt which i'm going to talk more about in a minute because blood is one of the motifs of macbeth but also his hands represent the personal actions he has taken it's like his responsibility so he feels like he will never be able to stop feeling guilty for what he has done what he has done with his own two hands and we can contrast that image with what he then says in act four scene one the very first links of my heart shall be the first links of my hand so this is when he's been to see the witches a second time and he's demanded that they give him more prophecies and they both make him feel incredible and awful within like you know seconds of each other so they make him feel invincible by telling him that no man born of woman can kill him and also that he will not be defeated until a wood moves towards a castle which of course to any sane human being basically sounds like he can't be defeated because a wood is never going to move of its own volition and everybody is born from a woman so there you go however they then scare the bejesus out of him by telling him that banquo's descendants are going to be king for time infinitum and the reason that this scares him so badly he references in a soliloquy by talking about the like um fruitless crown that's been put in his head and the baron scepter and this feeling that this was all for nothing if he can't keep it going if he can't pass the power on it was all pointless so when he's saying this the first things of my heart shall be the first things of my hand he's essentially showing his determination to not let the the third of the witch's prophecies come true while also firmly believing in the first two do you see the floor in his thinking here wanting to pick and choose how fate works um and so what that line translates to is the first thing i feel shall be the first thing i do because the heart symbolizes emotions and the hands symbolize his actions that of course is a huge change in his character from the start of the play like just think for a second about before he killed king duncan how much thinking he did about that i can think of at least two really long soliloquies plus a couple more asides just to be him being like should i do this should i not do this no i'm not gonna do this okay i will do this like he was constantly thinking and feeling and he was so conflicted now he's just like i'm not gonna think i'm not gonna feel i'm just gonna do so it's a signal of a really big change in his character big developmental step in his character so what you're able to analyze here is not just the fact that we've got a pattern of hands being referred to but how that pattern of hands that motif helps signal the change in his character which is again at that top level of things to do in an english essay you gotta be like comparing and contrasting and exploring how characters develop as a play goes on blood so before i start going through this i have to make a confession there are over a hundred different occasions where the word blood or bloody appear in macbeth and so when i was searching for the best quotes to go through in this video i read that word a lot and it means nothing to me now specifically my brain has suddenly decided that blood is not a word i've just been saying it wrong all this time and actually clearly just look at it that is blue right there that's that's blue so i have to make two apologies number one if i do accidentally say blood on bloody at some point in this explanation and also number two there were multiple occasions where i doubted myself on the spelling of blood and bloody as like at one point i did blo b-l-o-d-d-y because i was like yeah bloody right and and i doubted myself and i had to i i went into it a dark bloody place because of how many times i had to read that word so uh yeah if you do see any mistakes like that i'm not a complete fool i know these words my brain has just had to read them way too many times so the first thing that blood symbolizes nice and simple is violence and you can see that in these two quotations did i point the right way from act one scene two and act two scene one so act one scene two that's the very first time we're getting um an insight into macbeth's character from the captain and he's telling us all about the battle against macdonald and he describes how macbeth enters the battle with brandished steel which just means he's holding his sword out and his sword is smoking with bloody execution so that's referring to the fact that his sword is so covered in blood because of the number of people that he's killed that and obviously we're in scotland so it's bleeding cold um it's like the the warmth i i don't know the scientific terms someone in the comments can tell me the scientific terms but you know this is like the steam rising off of the sword because of all of the blood the hot blood on the in the cold air that's on it and then the second thing and from act two scene one that's when macbeth is having his hallucinations of the dagger right before he goes to kill king duncan and he's trying to decide if the dagger is real or if it's a hallucination and he concludes it is a hallucination and it is the bloody business which informs us to mine eyes so it's the violent act i'm about to go commit that is making me hallucinate a dagger so that violence of blood is important in showing how violence is a common part it is it's a natural part of the best character from the very beginning and that's really important because obviously hit the amount of violence he is going to know the amount of violence he's going to engage in is not going to increase arguably because you know battle compared to essentially one person he gets somebody else to kill bankroll and mcdonald's family but what does change about the violence is his moral compass around it when it's described as being an execution that's like you're punishing somebody who's done wrong things so it's like at the beginning of the play macbeth was killing people who had wronged king duncan he was killing rebels against king duncan he was on the right side of history if you will he was killing people who had done bad things later on in the play with killing king duncan killing um banquo and trying to kill banquo's son killing mcduff's uh family which is women and children like that's seven levels of wrong in terms of a moral compass and so what changes is not his violence but the acceptability of his violence it's also important to note that macbeth is very aware of the violence of what he's doing the bloody business which informs us to my eyes he's aware of the role violence plays um and that's important because you know he's under no illusions under of how he's gaining his power he knows it's a part of who he is and he knows that he's using it basically to his advantage blood can also represent family lines like bloodlines and we see that in these two quotes so the first one act two scene three king duncan is now dead macbeth is around the other lords like macduff and donald malcolm and he is pretending to be devastated that king duncan is dead um because obviously he's not telling anybody that he did it and he says here lay duncan his silver skin laced with his golden blood so in this case the image of blood is about this idea of um first of all like his goodness his purity his morality his high value and significance in society as exemplified with the metaphor of golden blood but also blood representing this idea of who you are innately like king duncan was just a good person right inside of him as well as what he looked like from the outside and then in that same scene a little bit later on donald bain is talking to his brother malcolm and he's basically explaining why they need to leave and escape here after their father's death because there's daggers in men's smiles the near and blood the nearer bloody in other words you can't trust people that you think you can the nearer you are in blood relation the more likely you are to have committed violence against them so everyone is going to suspect donald bane and malcolm to have been the ones to kill king duncan because they are his sons so we can see how blood is all about symbolizing who you are inside as a person and also your like relationships with others as well with the bloodline too the final symbolic significance of blood is guilt now i've already referenced this a bit when we saw the quote with macbeth in his bloody hands and not being able to wash the blood off of his hands because of course as well as being the violence he's committed is like the inability to get rid of that violence to undo the violent act that he has done and another great quote which shows this idea is from act 3 scene 4 which is when macbeth is being haunted by banquo's ghost um and he macbeth says that banquo is saying banquo's ghost is saying it will have blood they say blood will have blood so here's this idea again of violence but also of revenge blood will have blood i will you know get my own back on you and the reason i'm saying that line shows the guilt that macbeth feels also tracks back to whether banquo's ghost is real or not so there's two ways of interpreting it if we start off by saying banquo's ghost is real banquo's ghost is there and is speaking to macbeth then in that case it's linking to the theme of the natural versus unnatural and the idea that what macbeth has done by becoming king is so unnatural that it has essentially turned the world upside down and things that shouldn't be able to happen are now happening like ghosts being around on the other hand another way to interpret banquo's ghost is the fact that he is a hallucination and a hallucination that is happening as a consequence of macbeth's guilt now the reason we could argue hallucination is because of the fact that back in act two macbeth hallucinated a dagger and at that point as we've already discussed he himself thought that the dagger was a hallucination as a result of his conflicted feelings about the murder of king duncan so essentially it's already been established for us as an audience that macbeth can hallucinate things when he feels really conflicted when he feels really guilty so in that sense this line is macbeth's own guilt macbeth almost projecting onto himself that he feels like there should be revenge against him that he feels there should be violence against him and that's why he's hallucinating banquo's ghost saying that to him another important motif of the blood that i haven't included here but again links to lady macbeth i really haven't given her enough love in this video have i considering she's like my favorite character in this play is the fact that lady macbeth when she's sleepwalking and when she has gone insane she is constantly trying to wash blood off of her hands the classic line of out damned spot she's trying to get the blood off her hands she also says that stuff like um who knew he would have so much blood in him referring to king duncan and how much blood he had in him so again it's like the blood is what is haunting lady macbeth the violence of what they did is what is haunting lady macbeth so i've gone through quite a few different symbolic significance of blood in this play and that's why you're really going to have to look at the specific example you find in whatever quote you're looking at and ask yourself which applies are we looking at bloodlines are we looking at um guilt are we looking at violence is it a combo of two or more of those um because as i've already mentioned there are over 100 references to blood so it's going to have lots of different situations it's also worth noting that especially towards the end when the other scottish laws have turned against macbeth blood and bloody gets used a lot to describe scotland itself so if we think about macbeth being a violent character suddenly it's like his violence is is spreading throughout scotland and it's influencing and corrupting scotland so all of scotland is dealing with this uh level of violence because of who is now king so that brings us to the end of this video make sure if you haven't already you hit like and subscribe and you come back again for more videos on all things english see you later