Theme: Macbeth, Act 2

Inner struggles result in mental and physical repercussions.

In Macbeth, Act 2, Macbeth's psyche begins its demise as he perceives, "Is this a dagger which I see before me,/The handle toward my hand?"  Stated before the killing of Duncan, the reader begins the witness of what effect  inner struggles can have on a person. Macbeth, acknowledging that the dagger may be a false creation of the mind, blames his eyes, the eyeglasses of the brain, as they attempt to fool his other senses, resulting in his questioning what  seems to appear before him.

In this same scene, Lady Macbeth recognizes the same decline in Macbeth's psyche when she declares, "You do unbend your noble strength, to think/So brainsickly of things."  Here, she, attempting to steer him away from his memories of the guards' reactions to his "deed," pushes him to remain in control of his faculties.  When he refuses to take the daggers back and place them on the guards, she, realizing that he appears have reached his max, agrees to assist him, taking the daggers back to the murder scene.

Edgar Allan Poe, also, illustrates the repercussions of inner struggles in his short story "The Tell Tale Heart" when the narrator, killing the old man because of his enlarged eye, seems to cross the line of sanity to insanity.  Thinking his crime would not be detected, he buried the body beneath the flooring of his house, yet the heart, continuing to thump, signals the break in his psyche.  The repercussion of this inner struggle, ironically, results his confession, leading to arrest and imprisonment.

Thus, both narratives, proving that one should guard against too much turmoil, further suggest that repercussions from these upheavals are inevitable.