Thomas De Quincey, in his essay “On the knocking at the gate in Macbeth”(1823), is studying the problem whether knocking at the gate in Macbeth should produce any effect. De Quincey suggests ” time must be annihilated”. At the first I couldn’t understand what he means by that. However if we think of time as a sign of changes or precisely saying, seeing “our demons”, that has been created by our bad decisions in the past, catching up with us and affecting our present/future, it all makes sense as time indicates impossibility to do something with that. I would like to bring up the topic how sound is related to all of this. Contrary to appearances it is really easy to be explained. Talking specifically about Act II, Scene III in The Tragedy of Macbeth, to which Thomas De Quincey refers in his work, the sound of knocking is direct event before Duncan’s murder which will affect Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s lives.
Sound is the indicator of changes and passing time and knocking at the gate, by itself, can be seen as knocking to the hell and crossing the line between reality and dark underworld, which completely distorts time that is known to us or even annihilate it if we assume that outside our world time doesn’t exist like in black hole in outer space.