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Macbeth Perfect Crime Quotes

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The perfect crime is a crime that yields satisfactory results, and at no point has any negative repercussions. The word perfect indicates something that is completely positive, and has nothing wrong with it. One example of the perfect crime would be the the murders of the Zodiac Killer; he claimed to have killed 37 people, and sent letters to newspapers and police taunting them, but he was never found. He got away with all of his acts unscathed. In the play Macbeth, the main character, Macbeth, kills the king of Scotland, and takes his role as the king. After he kills the king, there are many things that go wrong. After the murder, Macbeth is driven insane, has more people killed, does a terrible job of ruling, and sees his wife take her own …show more content…
After killing Duncan, Macbeth says, “Whence is that knocking? How is ’t with me when every noise appals me? What hands are here? Ha! They pluck out mine eyes. Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.” (Macbeth 2.2.74-81). In the above quote, Macbeth has just killed Duncan, and is filled with fear and anxiety. Any noise scares him, and says that if he were to dip his hands into the ocean, rather than the ocean cleansing his hands of the blood, his hands would stain the entire ocean red. That shows how he is incredibly overcome with grief, which is why he goes insane. Macbeth could not bear to think about what he has done to his great king, and that anguish drives him mad. Some examples of his insanity are when he sees the ghost of Banquo, when he seeks out the witches because he fears he is being conspired against, or at the end, when he has a virtually no reaction to the death of his wife. The death of his wife is also due to the murder, for she too becomes paranoid due to grief, and takes her own life. The insanity that follows the killing ruins Macbeth’s life; it takes his wife from him, and he is a terrible ruler because of it, which ends up costing him his own life. That is why the statement that Macbeth is never punished and essentially committed the perfect crime is false. His loss of sanity and the death of his wife are certainly punishments, which is why his crime is

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