MACBETH : WORD BANK FOR GCSE ENGLISH LITERATURE RESPONSES.
Try and use some of these words or phrases in your analysis of Macbeth. You may like to look at a specific extract first in order to focus your response in a concentrated way.
Contamination
megalomania/narcissism/egotism
Malignancy/connivance/ moral sickness
Hypocrisy
Insincerity/façade of loyalty/dishonour
Duplicity
Degradation of ‘manliness’ ( wrongly redefined as decisiveness of courage. Lacking humanity)
Debauchery /Depravity
Fall of innocence /Lack of redemption
Paranoia
Sacrifice/ abandonment
Naivety/reckless trust
Loss of moral compass
Moral disorder
Disorientation
Subversion
Undermining of familial ties and relationships
Mental dis-ease
Conspiratorial
Corruption
Betrayal of intimacy
Moral darkness
Moral abyss
Hallucinatory temptation
Displacement of blame
Lack of moral responsibility
Degenerate masculinity(Destabilising of barely moral, warlike world)
Perfidy
Surrender to seductive masculinity
Façade of civility
Reconciliation
Abject horror
Visceral reaction
Malevolent intimacy
Sexual intimacy usurped by murderous greed
Terrible consummation of relationship
Warped affection/degraded love
Political expediency/subjugation of personal humanity or compassion
Self-deception
Escalation of evil
Remorseless pursuit of power
Callousness
Death Driven
Manliness redrawn as callous violence
Masculinity falsely defined as brutality and inhumanity
Wanton violence
Residue of innocence
Restoration of human value
Absence of self-government
Externalisation/displacement of guilt
Failure of imagination and morality
Mental torment/mental nightmare Exclamative / Interrogatives
Symmetry in hallucinatory visions and haunting
Numbness/catatonic
Catastrophic shock
Fragmentation and humanity (versus coherence and deception)