Out, damned spot! out, I say! – One: two: why, then, ’tis time to do ‘t. – Hell is murky! – Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? – Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.
– William Shakespeare
Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1. The first sentence is one of most recognizable spoken by Lady Macbeth. It has to be one of the most striking images of guilt in literature. A sleepwalking Lady Macbeth wishes to wash an imaginery spot of blood from her hands. Her sleepwalking is a manifestation of her guilty conscience over her role in her husband’s murders. Her descent into madness, as she relives feelings of overwhelming guilt, are evident. Lady Macbeth is seeing things that aren’t there. She has collapsed emotionally and mentally. When she speaks about hell being murky, this suggests that she believes the sins she has committed, including regicide, are enough to damn her to hell. Her isolation and loneliness is very apparent in this passage.