Literary Analysis: Imagery in Macbeth

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Literary Analysis: Imagery in Macbeth

Imagery can create responses from any of the reader's senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell, or taste. Written images can illuminate for the reader the meaning of both individual moments and patterns of meaning that run throughout the text. Many of the images Shakespeare calls upon are archetypal, images and symbols that are expressed repeatedly in art and literature across a variety of cultures. These archetypal images have a universal appeal and clearly support the underlying meaning of the text. Look at this imagery-laden quotation from the First Witch in The Tragedy of Macbeth, Act IV.

Pour in sow's blood, that hath eaten

Her nine farrow, grease that's sweaten

From the murderer's gibbet throw into the flame.

This passage contains visual imagery: pig's blood; a mother pig eating her nine young. It also contains imagery of touch: grease from the noose that hangs a murderer; grease added to a flame.

Paying attention to imagery can guide you to a deeper understanding of the text. As you read, be on the lookout for repeated imagery; for example, think about the image of blood that runs throughout the entire text of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Blood is an archetypal image that can mean many different things: loyalty, guilt, revenge, death, brotherhood, parent-child relationship, royalty, for example. Think about the significance of each of these ideas within the plot of the play.

Directions: Read the following passages from The Tragedy of Macbeth and then identify the words in each passage that create imagery. Then write what that imagery makes you think of after reading it.

1. "When shall we three meet again? / In thunder, lightning, or in rain?"

Words that create imagery: 

Your personal connection: 

2. "Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires..."

Imagery: 

Connection: 

3. "I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition, which o'er leaps itself / And falls on th' other..."

Imagery: 

Connection: 

4. "But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in / To saucy doubts and fears..."

Imagery: 

Connection: