“Character is what a man is in the dark.” » -Dwight L. Moody. This quote says that we only know who a person is when the masks are removed at night and we are allowed to say and think whatever they want to think. In many great plays, darkness is used as a representation of truth or evil. This is a quote from Macbeth that perfectly sums up Shakespeare's use of darkness. Darkness is used in many books as evil and sleep as the unknown. Shakespeare updates these themes in Macbeth. In Macbeth William, Shakespeare uses night and sleep to demonstrate the moral code and guilt behind the character's true self. In the beginning, Macbeth uses the night to represent evil thoughts. An example is when Macbeth says his thoughts of killing Duncan are wrong: “Stars, hide your fires;/Let not the light see my dark and deep desires:/The eye winks to the hand; but let it be so, / What the eye fears to see, when finished,” (1.4.50-53). His thoughts are so terrible that he doesn't want the light to see them because he feels guilty and this also shows that light is good, darkness is bad. Another example of something very similar is found after Lady Macbeth's Soliloquy: "Come, thick night, / And wrap yourself in hell's darkest smoke, / That my sharp knife may not see the wound he makes, / Nor let the sky look through the cover of darkness. , / To shout “Here, there!” (1.5.50-54). Again, it's a quote that says she doesn't want the light to see her actions, which becomes a common thread between many of the horrible acts that take place over the course of the play. Finally, after the moon had set, Banquo said to Fleance: “There is agriculture in the sky; / Their candles are all out” (2.1.4-5). What Banquo is really saying is that there are no stars in the sky and the night has darkened them so much that ... middle of paper ...... she is afraid of evil, but at the same time she has committed so much evil, her eyes are closed in this sense, because she is darkness and evil. These are just a few quotes that show how the darkness changes what it represents about the moral code at the end of Macbeth. Shakespeare uses night and sleep to demonstrate the moral code and guilt behind the character's true self. In many great works of literature, night and darkness are used to represent evil or a corrupt moral code. In the play Macbeth, William Shakespeare uses night and sleep to demonstrate the moral code and guilt behind the character's true self. In many great works of literature, darkness or night is used as evil or as the character's true self. This quote from Macbeth sums up well how night and sleep were used in Macbeth: “The instruments of darkness tell us the truth. » Works CitedMacbeth