Family Loyality In No Great Mischief And King Lear

Family loyalty refers to the feelings of mutual obligation, commitment, and closeness that exist among family members (e.g., parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren and siblings). A loyal per¬son is ready to sacrifice even his own life for the sake of his master, friend, relative or the country. The significance of loyalty in family relationship is an integral part in both Macleod’s novel No Great Mischief and Shakespeare’s play King Lear. However, the characters in No great Mischief have demonstrated true devotion towards every family member whereas Lear’s stubbornness prevents him from being faithful which is shown by the characters.
In the novel No Great Mischief, the narrator, Alexander MacDonald, and his twin sister are raised by their grandparents after the deaths of their parents and eleven-year-old brother. On one hand, Alexander calls himself ‘unlucky’ as his parents died but, on the other hand he finds himself ‘lucky’ because he is blessed with grandparents, who have worked so hard to provide every luxurious thing for their grandchildren, which they even didn’t provide the same for their own children, so that they wouldn’t ever feel themselves near to the ground. Cordelia and her two other sisters, Regan and Goneril, are brought up by his father, there is no one in the family who can take care of these girls in all respect, no one who can teach them good and bad manners. Regan and Goneril being an elder sister are supposed to take care of her younger sister and guide her as a mother; instead, they are jealous of Cordelia as she is Lear’s favorite and obedient daughter. As Cordelia is thrown out of the kingdom, she goes to her sisters and tells them that she knows about their falsehood and makes request to t...

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...oss lightning? To watch—poor perdu!—/With this thin helm? Mine enemy’s meanest dog,/Though he had bit me, should have stood that night/Against my fire. And wast thou fain, poor father,/To hovel thee with swine and rogues forlorn/In short and musty straw? Alack, alack!/'Tis wonder that thy life and wits at once/Had not concluded all.—He wakes. Speak to him.” (King Lear, 4, vii, 30-42). Knowingly even after how she is being treated by her father, she still shows her faithfulness.
In conclusion, family bonding and loyalty are dependent on each other as appeared in No Great Mischief, which makes the relationship strong and keeps the family strengthen in odd times. Whereas, in King Lear, characters acted both as hypocritically and faithfully, but due to the absence of family bonding, Lear and Gloucester could not recognize the true intentions of the double dealer.