AQA GCSE English Literature · 8702
Paper 1, Paper 2
Responsibility for wrongdoing, or the distress someone feels because they believe they have done wrong. In Macbeth, these meanings do not always coincide.
Revise: GuiltConscience is the inner sense of right and wrong. It can resist wrongdoing before it happens; guilt can describe both responsibility for a crime and the distress that follows it. Macbeth is morally responsible for murders even when he seems less troubled by them.
- Revise: Guilt and responsibility
Responsibility for wrongdoing; the word can also describe the troubled feeling someone experiences when they recognise that they have acted wrongly.