Rejection in King Lear
An important idea present in William Shakespeare's "King Lear" is
rejection and the role this rejection plays in the experiences of the involved
characters. The important ideas to be considered here are the causes and
effects associated with the act of rejection. The most important situations to
be considered in the story of "King Lear" are those that develop between the
two fathers, Lear and Gloucester, and their children, Goneril and Regan,
Cordelia, Edmund, and Edgar. Each case falls on a different plane, but it is
important to consider the similarities between the positions of Lear and
Gloucester.
The rejection of Lear by his two daughters, Goneril and Regan, can be
seen as a type of revenge. Throughout their lives they had always been far
behind Cordelia in the king's eyes. As a result of this second-hand treatment,
Goneril and Regan carried with them an immense amount of hatred and when Lear
divided his kingdom between them, they both openly rejected his presence in
their lives. " Some other time for that. - Beloved Regan, she hath tied sharp-
tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture here, - I can speak scarce to thee ; thou'lt
not believe with how depraved quality - O Regan ( King Lear II.iii )!
Goneril's response further clarifies this rejection. " Good sir, no more ;
these are unsightly tricks : return you to my sister ( King Lear II.iii ).
Lear's reaction is pure rage. He understands that he had not given them too
much of his time, but he had given them their percentage of the kingdom only
because they had made a pledge to him that they would care for him in his
elder years. The bond broken in this situation is a very weak one. The only
thing that held it together was this flimsy pledge that the daughters had no
intention of honoring. But no matter the conditions, he was their father and
his well-being was a sort of payment for their very existence.
Cordelia's rejection of Lear breaks a much stronger bond. Lear loses his
entire life purpose when Cordelia turns Lear away.
Good my lord, you have begot me, bred me, lov'd me : I
...lf and of knowing who they were and to feel like a whole but then he ruined his very own kingdom also by not sticking to his own teachings and acclaiming himself a higher power then the deity’s that they worshipped.
Thou shall honour thy father and thy mother, is not only one of ten powerful commandments but is also the foundation for King Lear's perception of himself and his overwhelming situation in Shakespeare's masterpiece King Lear. After a recent life-altering decision, Lear's seemingly stable and comfortable world has been thrown into upheaval through the disobedience and lies told by not only his two daughters but also by his servants! Thus, after being dishonoured by his family and attendants, Lear forms an accurate perception of his situation, that he is "a man / More sinned against than sinning" (Act III scene ii lines 60 - 61).
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The Shaper is a blind man who comes to Hrothgar’s hall one day, promising to sing for their entertainment. He weaves an embellished tale of how Hrothgar’s ancestor, Scyld, had “rebuilt the old Danish Kingdom from ashes.” (Gardner, 42) Grendel witnessed the disorganized fighting that led to Hrothgar’s tribe consolidating his power, but the artful skills of the Shaper’s song almost lead him to believe that the lies are true. This confuses Grendel, because the Shaper must know the truth (one can’t lie about the past if they don’t know how it happened), so why does he say things that are blatantly untrue? More importantly, why does Grendel lose himself in the words of the Shaper? Grendel finds himself hanging onto every word the Shaper says, just because the songs he sings are beautiful in and of themselves. When Hrothgar builds a magnificent mead hall and celebrates with all his subjects, Grendel actually starts to believe that Hrothgar is a benevolent, wise king. He knows this isn’t true, but the Shaper continues to sing about Hrothgar’s greatness, and Grendel mentally goes along with it. All of this backfires, however, when the Shaper sings about Grendel being cursed by Cain. When Grendel is chased out of the hall after he finds the dead man, he realizes that the Shaper has his own version of what is right and what is wrong, just like everybody else. He says “if the Shaper’s vision of goodness and peace was a part of
way Goneril and Regan treated King Lear they way they as the result of jealousy towards Cordelia.
and trustworthy. There would seem to be a sort of contract between the king and his subjects: he
lines of this soliloquy. “ O that this too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the
her love in relation to their filial bond. Although her father views this as a
Throughout recorded history, humans have deemed themselves superior to all other living creatures. The Bible, arguably the most influential work of literature extant, demonstrates human superiority in the excerpt, "Let us make man in our image...let them rule over the flesh of the sea and the birds of the air, over all the earth." This notion of superiority was especially evident during the Renaissance, a period categorized by the rebirth of thinking and knowledge. The Renaissance, which lasted from about 1300 to 1600, brought advances in science that clashed with traditional viewpoints on life and the universe. Galileo Galilei, an Italian physicist, mathematician, and astronomer, with evidence from Copernicus' works, proposed a heliocentric model of the universe; that is, a model in which the planets revolve around the sun. The Catholic Church opposed Galileo's ideas, claiming that Bible verses placed the earth at the center of the galaxy; this further supports the notion of human eminence. Galileo was placed on trail in 1633 for heresy and imprisoned for the remainder of his life. Galileo's imprisonment demonstrates the stronghold the church had on society, even during the Renaissance. Equanimity, compliance, and human superiority were tenets supported by the Catholic Church; dissent and individualism were not. Renaissance authors, such as William Shakespeare, seemed to protest human superiority and Stoicism. In King Lear, one of Shakespeare's especially famous works, the main character from which the play gains its namesake embarks on an emotional journey of self-discovery.
In The Tragedy of King Lear, particularly in the first half of the play, Lear continually swears to the gods. He invokes them for mercies and begs them for destruction; he binds both his oaths and his curses with their names. The older characters—Lear and Gloucester—tend view their world as strictly within the moral framework of the pagan religion. As Lear expresses it, the central core of his religion lies in the idea of earthly justice. In II.4.14-15, Lear expresses his disbelief that Regan and Albany would have put the disguised Kent, his messenger, in stocks. He at first attempts to deny the rather obvious fact in front of him, objecting “No” twice before swearing it. By the time Lear invokes the king of the pagan gods, his refusal to believe has become willful and almost absurd. Kent replies, not without sarcasm, by affixing the name of the queen of the gods to a contradictory statement. The formula is turned into nonsense by its repetition. In contradicting Lear’s oath as well as the assertion with which it is coupled, Kent is subtly challenging Lear’s conception of the universe as controlled by just gods. He is also and perhaps more importantly, challenging Lear’s relationship with the gods. It is Kent who most lucidly and repeatedly opposes the ideas put forth by Lear; his actions as well as his statements undermine Lear’s hypotheses about divine order. Lear does not find his foil in youth but in middle age; not in the opposite excess of his own—Edmund’s calculation, say—but in Kent’s comparative moderation. Likewise the viable alternative to his relationship to divine justice is not shown by Edmund with his ...
King Lear is a perfect demonstration of the great consequences one man's actions can cause. While there are certainly religious Christian elements to the story, the story is not one of morality or hope. King Lear is a lesson, making an example of what can come of a single, foolish, egotistical action. King Lear's action is the surrendering of his throne to his daughters.
King Lear is at once the most highly praised and intensely criticized of all Shakespeare's works. Samuel Johnson said it is "deservedly celebrated among the dramas of Shakespeare" yet at the same time he supported the changes made in the text by Tate in which Cordelia is allowed to retire with victory and felicity. "Shakespeare has suffered the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause, contrary to the natural ideas of justice, to the hope of the reader, and, what is yet more strange, to the faith of chronicles."1 A.C. Bradley's judgement is that King Lear is "Shakespare's greatest work, but it is not...the best of his plays."2 He would wish that "the deaths of Edmund, Goneril, Regan and Gloucester should be followed by the escape of Lear and Cordelia from death," and even goes so far as to say: "I believe Shakespeare would have ended his play thus had he taken the subject in hand a few years later...."3
The Consequences of Decisions in King Lear by William Shakespeare King Lear is a detailed description of the consequences of one man's decisions. This fictitious man is Lear, King of England, who's decisions greatly alter his life and the lives of those around him. As Lear bears the status of King he is, as one expects, a man of great power but sinfully he surrenders all of this power to his daughters as a reward for their demonstration of love towards him. This untimely abdication of his throne results in a chain reaction of events that send him through a journey of hell. King Lear is a metaphorical description of one man's journey through hell in order to expiate his sin.
It is said that no other playwright illustrates the human condition like William Shakespeare. Furthermore, it is said that no other play illustrates the human condition like King Lear. The story of a bad king who becomes a good man is truly one of the deepest analyses of humanity in literary history; and it can be best seen through the evolution of Lear himself. In essence, King Lear goes through hell in order to compensate for his sins.
King Lear is a play about a tragic hero, by the name of King Lear, whose flaws get the best of him. A tragic hero must possess three qualities. The first is they must have power, in other words, a leader. King Lear has the highest rank of any leader. He is a king. The next quality is they must have a tragic flaw, and King Lear has several of those. Finally, they must experience a downfall. Lear's realization of his mistakes is more than a downfall. It is a tragedy. Lear is a tragic hero because he has those three qualities. His flaws are his arrogance, his ignorance, and his misjudgments, each contributing to the other.