An Analysis Of King Lear And Running In The Family

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The way an author of a story pairs or splits its characters can have a profound impact on the plot of the story. This is especially true in the case of couples in a story. In some stories, couples are mutually brought together and they stay together, but in others they are only brought together because they have something to benefit from the relationship and it isn’t really love for them. This statement holds true for King Lear by William Shakespeare, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, and Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje. In King Lear, King Lear’s daughters Goneril and Regan, who are both married, both fall for Gloucester’s illegitimate son Edmund and try to constantly outdo each other to win his favor. In As I Lay Dying, Addie and Anse Bundren married and stayed together until Addie’s death, even though Addie expressed to the audience that she did not truly love him. In Running in …show more content…

She is both cunning and immoral, stopping at nothing to get what she wants. Regan, from King Lear is King Lear’s middle daughter and the wife of the Duke of Cornwall. She is in many ways just as cruel and immoral as her sister Goneril. Even though they are both married, Goneril and Regan eventually fall in love with Gloucester’s illegitimate son Edmund and try to win him over. Goneril goes as far as to try to get Edmund to kill her husband and marry her, but the note is discovered and the plot failed. In the final act of the play, however, Goneril discovers that Regan also wants Edmund and she poisons Regan’s drink, which ends up killing her. Near the end of the play, Edmund gets mortally wounded and ends up dying in the end. Goneril ends up killing herself after poisoning her sister and after having been confronted by the Duke of Albany of her plot to have him murdered. She kills herself, choosing to die with Edmund, showing her love for Edmund rather than her husband the Duke of

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