The dagger

In this scene of Macbeth Shakespeare uses metaphors to portray the character’s (Macbeth) state of mind. Macbeth is questioning whether he is hallucinating, dreaming or whether the dagger is real.“Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?” Shakespeare uses a dagger to show that Macbeth’s mind is unstable and he isn’t able to tell apart from reality. Symbolically a dagger is used for fatal reasoning. This dagger maybe piercing his brain with a feeling of separation from his old self. The dagger could also be interpreted as forcing him to act and kill.