Throughout Macbeth Shakespeare's vivid and somewhat gruesome imagery helps the reader perceive the plays gloomy atmosphere. Readers are constantly made aware of blood, even the blood Lady Macbeth cannot clean from her hands. The play is full of events and personalities, natural and unnatural. .
The image of blood is brought up many times throughout the play, and serves a major role in keeping the readers attention. Blood symbolizes death because every time blood is brought up someone just died or someone was reliving the death of another human being. .
Early on in the play Macbeth kills one of his good friends Duncan because Macbeth directly benefits from killing him. After he kills him he says, "And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood"(II,ii). At this point Macbeth realizes the severity of his actions, which causes him to remember this image of the bloody blade for the remainder of the play. Lady Macbeth appears to have no conscience because she is always encouraging Macbeth to do the wrong thing. Lady Macbeth's conscience is revealed when she is seen talking in her sleep. As she is talking in her sleep the death of Duncan is on her mind and says, "Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him" (V, I). This proves that Lady Macbeth does have a conscience, but is not affected by it enough to do the right thing. .
The image of washing and cleansing the hands is a very important image that has an underlying meaning to it. Early on in the play the image was simply washing " this filthy witness from your hand" (II, ii). As the play develops we find out there is another meaning of the image. Lady Macbeth says, "Come, come, come, come give me your hand! What's done cannot be undone" (V, I). We realize that Lady Macbeth is trying to clean her hands to wash her guilt away with the evidence. When she says, " What's done cannot be undone" she realizes that now it's to late to "wash" away the blood, it has stained her soul forever.