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Critical explanation of king lear
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The Importance of Family Family is what defines one's character and identity.
Shakespeare's
tragic play, King Lear, presents a ruling family and how its members' relationships
affect one another. The crumbling relationship between King Lear and his daughters
exemplifies his struggle to maintain his role in his family and his identity within
the state. Lear explains that human nature is marked by a desire for more than just
the necessities one already has. Lear needs more than the necessities of life not
only to survive but to keep his identity. However, Lear mistakes these needs and
misidentifies himself based on his titles than what he truly needs: his family.
King Lear gives a prime example of how relationships between a father and his
daughters can result in destruction, chaos, and insanity. In Act 2, scene 4, of
Shakespeare's play, King Lear's two eldest daughters Goneril and Regan refuse to
accommodate their father with shelter and disobey his requests. After awarding
Goneril and Regan his kingdom for professing their love to him, Lear requests that
he keeps one-hundred men and maintains his title as the king. By denying Lear these
desires, Goneril and Regan spark the beginning of Lear's ruin and downfall. Lear
professes his anger at his daughters with his speech of "Oh reason not the need"
(II, sc 4, ll. 262, p. 57).
Lear's desire to keep his identity as the king in the state diminishes. Lear's
insanity begins when he loses his identity as a recognized figure of family and
state. He mistakenly identifies himself as those figures. When he loses his hundred
men, Lear loses his identity as the king. He has been stripped to nothing and can
no longer recognize h...
... middle of paper ...
...mportance is not
what he needs to survive. Rather, it is his daughter Cordelia that he really needs.
At the end of the play, King Lear cries out with his animalistic howls with
Cordelia's dead body in his arms. His death shortly after signifies Cordelia's
necessity for Lear's survival in life.
By the end of the play, Lear's realization of his mistakes is too late to save him.
He realizes that Cordelia was the very thing that he needed. Shakespeare's tragic
play King Lear shows how familial relationships are integral to survival. What one
truly needs his family. The relationships we have with our family define our
character and can conversely drive us to insanity. Shakespeare's use of a ruling
family provides the claim that Lear's needs are not met by his role as king; rather
they are met by his relationship and love for his daughters.
Lear becomes blinded by his flaws, leading him to make irrational decisions which ultimately cause him to go mad. After Cordelia is unable to state how much she loves her father and outdo her sisters exaggerated professions of
As the play opens one can almost immediately see that Lear begins to make mistakes that will eventually result in his downfall. (Neher) 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. (Williams) Leaving him, in the end, with nothing. Following this Lear begins to banish those around him that genuinely care for him as at this stage he cannot see beyond the mask that the evil wear. He banishes Kent, a loyal servant to Lear, and his youngest and previously most loved daughter Cordelia. (Nixon) This results in Lear surrounding himself with people who only wish to use him which leaves him very vulnerable attack. This is precisely what happens and it is through this that he discovers his wrongs and amends them.
shall retain the name and all th’ addition to a king" (1.1.151-152). Following that he says "This coronet part between you" (1.1.155) to Cornwall and Albany. These two statements are contradictory and show Lear’s internal conflict with his role in life. There is only one crown in a kingdom, and the person who wears it has the ultim... ... middle of paper ... ...
King Lear has been in a position of authority and superiority. This position shapes King Lear into a man full of pride. However, as King Lear’s age grows, his emotional needs also grows. It is the false pride of Lear that blinded him with his emotional needs. King Lear behaved rashly and irresponsibly at the start of the play. Deep within Lear, he realizes that it is time for him to retired from this position of honor. Despite this realization, Lear’s pride keeps him from letting go of his power. King Lear wants the title and treatment of a king, but he does not want the work and obligations of the position. Therefore, when he makes the choice of letting his daughters to govern the kingdom, it foreshadows the strapping away of his p...
Lear is not forced, like Richard II is, to give up his crown. Although he is very old, he is not obliged to hand his power over to anyone, let alone divide his kingdom into three. Not only is he not obliged or compelled to do so, Kent even openly warns him against the act in Act I S...
Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear can be interpreted in many ways and many responses. The imprecision’s and complication of the play has led to its many production. Interpreting the issues and ideas in King Lear is dependant upon each individual responder. Individuals may be influenced by their own personal experiences, moral and ethical standards and the situation of their time.
As King, Lear represents in himself the conditions of the country which identifies itself with him just as he identifies himself with it. He is a man of great vital power, a commander of men, not only by virtue of his position, but by his very nature. He is generous, open and unsuspicious, though too choleric, vain, obstinate, passionate and domineering to be simply called "good". Beneath his vital personality of power lies an emotional ...
The character, King Lear, shows that he has a sense of entitlement while giving out a division of his authorities and properties. Indeed, King Lear’s entitlement leads him to take advantage of those who are powerless for his own personal gain. In Scene 1, Act 1, King Lear hears out his daughters as they express their love to him, and try to prove that they are deserving of his
King Lear is the figurehead of his kingdom with his power and command drawn from his crown. His crown is also a symbol for his kingdom which is essential to his ego and can be supported with the scene where he asks his daughters to tell him how much they love him. “Which of you shall we say doth love us most, /That we our largest bounty may extend /Where nature doth with merit challenge.” (I, i, 53-55) King Lear demands a public display of affection from his daughters because it demonstrates his dominance. The betrayal of Goneril and Regan destroys King Lear’s ability to command, as competition between the two sisters’ shatters his kingdom like an egg. Lear’s relationship to his crown can be compared to a hen and her egg; both mean the world to their owners, and bot...
the sudden loss of power that causes him to descend into madness. King Lear gives away his
King Lear is the protagonist within the play, he wears the label of a successful
...he same needs as others. He is learning about the physical and moral needs of all mankind. Lear strips himself naked, and starts to see his status as a king in a new way; “thou art the thing itself; unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal…” . He now realises that as a King he is responsible for the social welfare of the state, that his actions have political effect.
Lear’s utterances establish a standard of measurement that no other fictive personage can approach, the limits of human capacity for profound affect are consistently transcended by Lear. To feel what Lear suffers strains us as only our own greatest anguishes have hurt us; the terrible intimacy that Lear insists upon is virtually unbearable. (Bloom 513)
To begin, King Lear makes the conscious decision to split up his land, but he choses the most egotistical way to decide which of his daughter’s received which piece of land. Near the beginning Lear says, “Which of you shall say we doth love us most,/ that we our largest bounty may extend/ Where nature doth with merit challenge,” (I.i.52-54). This quotation demonstrates how Lear was constantly seeking ways to build his ego, and was looking for reassurance that he was still the best man that he could be. It proves to the reader or viewer that Lear is clearly not in his right mind. Demonstrating that maybe this character cannot be trusted, as a true king would not be likely to enact this type of behaviour. Society has trained most individuals that someone who constantly seeks attention is not an individual that anyone should want to associate with. Lear’s attitudes in regards to giving up his land to his daughter’s show that he ne...
Throughout the play, King Lear, we are awaiting to see the reunion of Lear and his daughter Cordelia. In the begining of the play Lear wrongfully disowns Cordelia because he does not get the flattery from her that he wishes to hear. However, through much torment after he is reduced to nothing, Lear realizes that he cannot always get what he wants just because he is a king.