Essay: Macbeth and his Inner Split: Self-Alienation, Violation, and Desolation

Moreover, it is only possible if value and non-value are recognized, if standards and norms are secretly affirmed and if mental orders become essentially conscious (Heuer, p.44, l.28ff.).
Owing to the witches’ prophecies (see Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3) the familiar world is now strange to Macbeth, his own self has become another. According to Marga Unterstenhöfer, the roots of this development lie in the violation of the own soul, through which the view of reality is clouded and ideas are being unleashed that degenerate into destructive delusions (Unterstenhöfer, p.155, l.16-21). This development becomes clear with Macbeth through his increasing self-communication in the course of the drama – being ‘asides’ and soliloquies – which, as a result of isolation and alienation, generally becomes the mirror of the tyrant’s psychology (see Unterstenhöfer, p.155, l.22ff.).
Especially in his aside-spoken statements before the murder of Duncan (see Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3, ll.129-144 ; Act 1, Scene 4, l.48-53) he begins to split himself. The beginning of this development is marked by the sudden shiver that hits him right after his appointment to Thane of Cawdor, since he just cannot explain for what reason he feels this shiver at all (see Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3, ll.132-144). He no longer understands himself, but sees what is going on inside of him and is therefore torn by his two opposite tendencies, for he is at the same time the blindly desiring and another, who recognizes these desires and consciously experiences them as his own self (Naumann, p.380, l.25-28).
In his eyes, he is not who he is. Through his deeds he does “choose” himself, but since every choice always represents the choice of crime and violence, he becomes more and more estranged and repulsive to himself (Kott, p.120, l.14-18); he can virtually no longer identify with his own character. This self-alienation will later develop into a personality split. Only with the help of this inner splitting does Shakespeare manage to depict this figure of Macbeth, who at the same time observes desire and its blind action inside him as if he was powerless against his own life, as if he suffered it (Naumann, p.380, l.28-32).
The separation between seeing (which is symbolized by his eye and conforms to the good part in him, namely reason, discernment, restraint and also his ‘conscience’) and desire (which depicts his hand as the evil side of his soul, thus being his pathological ambition and the absolute hunger for power, out of which the external action arises) in his mind is made clear when Macbeth says: “Stars, hide your fires, / Let not light see my black and deep desires. / The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be / Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.” (Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 4, l.50-53).
Since he cannot escape his “black and deep desires”, Macbeth wishes his hands to perform what his eyes fear to see (Naumann, 382, l.18-19). Thus he tries here to separate one part of his self from the other. Eye and hand shall become alien to one another; harmonic interplay is replaced by the dissolution of natural unity. Sacrilegiously, he wishes for a self-splitting – which, ultimately, means nothing other than the disintegration of his person – even though he is already aware of the cosmic correlations here; namely, just as he wants to disable his eye, which is destined to see, he also wishes the stars, whose vocation it is to shine, to be darkened (see Lüthi (1969), p.24, l.21-22).
Lady Macbeth, too, has prayed to the demonic forces of darkness for self-alienation1 (see Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5, ll.40-50). Just like her husband wanted to disable his eye and that of heaven – being the light – so it shall also happen to her natural femininity. The woman thus becomes a ‘male’. It is also her who leads Macbeth to his self-alienation. Ironically enough, she thereby appeals to his honor, to induce him to commit something dishonorable, and especially to his bravery and manfulness in order to make him commit a crime that is cowardly and does not befit a man.
The more Macbeth gives in to the dark forces inside him, the more he renounces the community and his original self. Though conscience and nature are reluctant against the deed, both Macbeth and his wife stifle their voices. They themselves cause the decay of their person and, with that, the decay of their connection with the world order; they even wish for it. It is Macbeth’s tragedy, as well as his wife’s, that they become estranged to their own nature and enforce this self-alienation and self-splitting themselves (Lüthi (1969), p.26, ll.7-13).
The complete break takes place with the murder of Duncan, which clearly makes the tyrant aware of his loss of identity. Now he is abandoned, alienated from himself and wishes for a split of his personality in order to be able to forget and to come to terms with himself: “To know my deed, ’twere best not know myself.“ (Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2, l.74). His good, truthful self preferably no longer wants to know his evil part which committed the deed.
But the deeply felt loss of his own humanity does not hinder him from securing his, through abysmal ambition, illegally acquired power by further murders and to take the process of self-alienation to the absurd by summoning chaos: