Ben Brodt
AP Literature
Carson
13 July 2014
Hubris in King Lear
Pride can either be advantageous or disastrous. In William Shakespeare’s King Lear, we see the hubris of King Lear send him on an unexpected journey through many adversities. Lear’s life is turned upside-down when he tries to rid himself of the responsibilities of being the king. He still wishes to keep the respect of royalty. As his life is altered, Lear’s destruction is brought about as he floats through several emotions, going from arrogance to rage, and finally to desperation. In Shakespeare’s King Lear, Lear’s egotistic attitude lead him down a spiraling emotional path that eventually leads to his death.
King Lear is an outright example of a character with hubris. He wishes to be treated like a king, but he wants to be relieved of all of the responsibilities of one.
-Know that we have divided
In three our kingdom, and ‘tis our fast intent
To
…show more content…
shake all cares and business from our age, Unburdened crawl toward death. (I.i.35-39) Lear is announcing the division of his kingdom in this passage, which functions as the opening example of hubris in the play. Kings of the time were seen as having divine right; they believed that God had chosen them. Lear decides to use his daughters to rid himself of the burden of royalty. This demonstrates the excessive pride Lear shows throughout the play. Lear selfishly and arrogantly divides up his kingdom, a right that he is not viewed as having. Without considering the consequences, he foolishly parcels out sections of his kingdom depending on the amount of love his daughters can express to him. “Which of you shall we say doth love us most/ That we our largest bounty may extend,” (I.i.50-51). This proves to be unwise as Goneril and Regan, Lear’s two ruthless daughters, insincerely flatter their father and each obtains a large portion of the land. Cordelia, the only truly good daughter, receives nothing from her father after she refuses to lie about her love for him. She is disowned by her father, but remains loyal to her him throughout the play. King Lear’s hubris blinds him to the deceit of Goneril and Regan, and this begins the process of his downfall. Lear begins the play full of arrogance and overconfidence. Lear moves into a period of denial and rage when he learns of his daughters betraying him.
His hubris is still at work through his disbelief that his own children would defy him.
LEAR. No, no, they would not.
KENT. Yes, they have.
LEAR. By Jupiter, I swear “No.”
KENT. By Juno, I swear “Ay.”
This passage is the shift from arrogance to denial, and from denial to rage in Lear’s emotion. His rage builds as the two daughters to whom he gave his kingdom begin to betray him. He expresses to Kent his utter disbelief that his own family would humiliate him. His hubris remains as his anger elevates further. The final leg of the emotional path of King Lear is solitude. The storm symbolizes how powerless the king has become:
Thou think’st ‘tis much that this contentious storm
Invades us to the skin. So ‘tis to thee.
But where the greater malady is fixed
The lesser is scarce felt (III.iv.6-9).
Lear is showing that part of his mind is still sane after all of the emotion and rage. His unwillingness to control his emotions completes the deterioration of King
Lear. King Lear’s path from overconfidence to solitude was a lengthy and strenuous journey. The entire unraveling of Lear’s vision for his life is his own doing. His hubris caused him to become narrow-minded and blind to reason, which lead to the poor choices in the beginning of the play. Only Lear can be held accountable for his own destruction. He allowed his pride to get in the way of his visions for his future as well as the people around him. His arrogance led to him losing his kingdom, his family, and eventually his life.
He expresses his anger at the storm by trying to tell the storm to be even more fierce to him. Lear says that since those who owe him everything are so harmful to him, why shouldn't the storm which owes him nothing be any less? Here he starts to notice that he isn’t the “Fierce King” everyone thinks he is. On the contrary, he sees himself as a poor, weak man. After this, Lear begins another change, and that is thinking of others instead of just himself.
William Shakespeare devised Edmund as an ambitious character that seeks power over others within his tragedy King Lear. Tainted by his illegitimacy, Edmund must rise to power through his own capabilities and intellect rather than inheritance. However, his drive for power leads him toward corruption as he commits treachery to both his father and brother. Shakespeare demonstrates the problem society has with those who seek power as a means for retribution.
Through Lear, Shakespeare expertly portrays the inevitability of human suffering. The “little nothings,” seemingly insignificant choices that Lear makes over the course of the play, inevitably evolve into unstoppable forces that change Lear’s life for the worse. He falls for Goneril’s and Regan’s flattery and his pride turns him away from Cordelia’s unembellished affection. He is constantly advised by Kent and the Fool to avoid such choices, but his stubborn hubris prevents him from seeing the wisdom hidden in the Fool’s words: “Prithee, tell him, so much the rent of his land comes to: he will not believe a fool” (Shakespeare 21). This leads to Lear’s eventual “unburdening,” as foreshadowed in Act I. This unburdening is exacerbated by his failure to recognize and learn from his initial mistakes until it is too late. Lear’s lack of recognition is, in part, explained by his belief in a predestined life controlled completely by the gods: “It is the stars, the stars above us govern our conditions” (Shakespeare 101). The elder characters in King Lear pin their various sufferings on the will of...
Arrogance and gullibility are two terrible traits to have. The best example of it in human form is Macbeth, from Shakespeare's play Macbeth. It´s a horrible tragedy about a power hungry, arrogant man who is easily gullible and let what other characters say about him get to him. Inside the play Macbeth is completely to blame for his downfall at the hands of Macduff.
In Chapter 4 of a book titled Escape from Freedom, the famous American psychologist Erich Fromm wrote that "Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction" (Fromm 98). Fromm realized that avarice is one of the most powerful emotions that a person can feel, but, by its very nature, is an emotion or driving force that can never be satisfied. For, once someone obtains a certain goal, that person is not satisfied and continues to strive for more and more until that quest leads to their ultimate destruction. For this reason, authors have embraced the idea of greed in the creation of hundreds of characters in thousands of novels. Almost every author has written a work centered around a character full of avarice. Ian Fleming's Mr. Goldfinger, Charles Dickens' Scrooge, and Thomas Hardy's John D'Urberville are only a few examples of this attraction. But, perhaps one of the best examples of this is found in William Shakespeare's King Lear. Edmund, through his speech, actions, and relationships with other characters, becomes a character consumed with greed to the point that nothing else matters except for the never-ending quest for status and material possessions.
... Lears blessing, and declared his daughter. Lear also realized that Kents speaking out was for Lear’s best and that he too was abused and banished. What stings Lear even more is that he is now completely dependent upon his two shameless daughters, Goneril and Regan. Plus that he must now beg them when he took care of them like a father when they were once children, to drive Lears further into madness he realizes that as king he was so ignorant and blind with power that he never took care of the homeless and let them suffer. All these realization and the fact that Lear is in his second childhood a tender stage drive him into the peak of madness.
The seven deadly sins are very much alive in society today. Of these seven, the two most common are pride and wrath. In William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, pride and wrath lead to the downfalls of some of the main characters. Pride is defined as a high or inordinate opinion of one's own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc. (Fowler, F. G., H. W. Fowler, and R. E. Allen 1984). It has been said to be the sin from which all others arise. In Hamlet, Hamlet's excessive pride leads him to make crucial mistakes that contribute to his downfall.
Hubris, pride, the fatal flaw that customarily demises Shakespeare's tragic heroes. This wicked trait consumes individuals, deteriorating their morals and disorienting ones righteous logic. Turning any ordinary overachiever into a self-important, arrogant, narcissistic, vain fool. Although most could argue that having pride is merely being satisfied with one's achievements, it still bears an egoistic connotation. Pride, finding pleasure in one’s qualities.
Despite its undeniable greatness, throughout the last four centuries King Lear has left audiences, readers and critics alike emotionally exhausted and mentally unsatisfied by its conclusion. Shakespeare seems to have created a world too cruel and unmerciful to be true to life and too filled with horror and unrelieved suffering to be true to the art of tragedy. These divergent impressions arise from the fact that of all Shakespeare's works, King Lear expresses human existence in its most universal aspect and in its profoundest depths. A psychological analysis of the characters such as Bradley undertook cannot by itself resolve or place in proper perspective all the elements which contribute to these impressions because there is much here beyond the normal scope of psychology and the conscious or unconscious motivations in men.
William Shakespeare's play Macbeth is a five-act drama that shows a clear example of how pride, greed, and power can alter a man's actions and personality. The taste of power blinds the story's main character, Macbeth. Sparked by Lady Macbeth, he becomes heartless and cruel as he kills anyone who is a threat to his power due to his paranoia of losing the throne. This fear ironically leads to his downfall and loss of the throne. The theme of the story is deceit and evil and how they affect a man's decisions.
(Act I, Sc i, Ln 47-53) This is the first and most significant of the many sins that he makes in this play. By abdicating his throne to fuel his ego he is disrupts the great chain of being which states that the King must not challenge the position that God has given him. This undermining of God's authority results in chaos that tears apart Lear's world. Leaving him, in the end, with nothing.
he is weak, scared, and a confused old man. At the end of the play Lear has
Once Goneril and Regan took complete control of the kingdom, it was evident that King Lear’s power and authority was tarnished. Goneril and Regan abuse of power lead to the madness and the crisis Lear experienced. For example, while Lear was outside in during the storm, he basically questioned who he was not only as king, but as a man. "Doth any here know me? This is not Lear: Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes?" (I..IV.218-222). this quote just shows the depth of Lear’s troubles and blindness. Now that Lear has lost all his power to the evil actions of his two daughters, he’s essentially in an identity crisis, and unable to see who he truly is anymore with the title of “king”, which all play a part in his tragedy and eventual
...e mock trial for his unfaithful daughters. He only regains a modicum of sanity when he is rescued by Cordelia, who treats him as he deserves, giving him fresh garments and restorative medicine. When Lear wakes in her presence, he is not entirely lucid, not knowing his whereabouts and surroundings, but the doctor declares that “The great rage you see is killed in him” (IV. vii. 90-91). Once Lear is restored to his former majesty, his madness is quelled. The imbalance of nature is rectified, and consequently, the mind of nature’s king is healed.
The first stage of Lear’s transformation is resentment. At the start of the play it is made quite clear that Lear is a proud, impulsive, hot-tempered old man. He is so self-centered that he simply cannot fathom being criticized. The strength of Lear’s ego becomes evident in the brutal images with which he expresses his anger towards Cordelia: “The barbarous Scythian,/Or he that makes his generation messes/To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom/Be as well neighboured, pitied, and relieved,/As thou may sometime daughter.” (1.1.118-122). The powerful language that Lear uses to describe his intense hatred towards Cordelia is so incommensurable to the cause, that there can be only one explanation: Lear is so passionately wrapped up in his own particular self-image, that he simply cannot comprehend any viewpoint (regarding himself) that differs from his own (no matter how politely framed). It is this anger and resentment that sets Lear’s suffering and ultimate purification in motion.