Madness And Animal Imagery In Shakespeare's King Lear

Where can the line be drawn between sanity and madness? Is extreme human suffering the catalyst that leads humans to become something entirely animal like, beastly even? William Shakespeare explores these questions in his famed tragedy, King Lear. The play is centered around King Lear, the tragic hero of the narrative, and his descent into madness. Shakespeare repeatedly uses animal imagery throughout the play to communicate the idea that humans, in the midst of extreme emotions, have the potential to be reduced to nothing more than beasts. Shakespeare uses animal imagery to degrade characters, exhibit Lear’s disintegration, and create a contrast with the voice of reason in order to demonstrate Lear’s slow unraveling.

Animal imagery is used in a straightforward and basic way in order to call specific people and their

The animal imagery woven within brings about the question of what causes the onset of madness. The line between human nature and beastly nature is a difficult and fine line to draw. Human emotion is natural. Anger, pride, and wrath, are feelings which every individual will likely experience, albeit in varying degrees. The thing that separates beasts from men is that beasts lose the ability to reason, their emotion overwhelms them and they are engulfed by it. Shakespeare brilliantly weaves animal imagery into King Lear in order to make the message and questioning of madness even more vivid in the reader’s mind. The deterioration of Lear throughout the play can be traced through animal symbolism and parallels, animal attributes, and animal behavior. Shakespeare is trying to communicate that perhaps it is impossible for humans to ever truly know where or how to draw the line between sanity and madness, and maybe no one can truly know how close he or she is to crossing over that line. Madness may always be lurking, searching for an opportunity to