Self Awareness In King Lear

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Recommended: Analysis of King Lear as a tragedy

Self-awareness is a common struggle among people; self-awareness is the ability to perceive oneself and others along with how humans interact with each others. The play King Lear by William Shakespeare is a tragedy with many twists and turns, self awareness is a skill that Lear struggles as the play develops. Lack of self-awareness leads to madness which results in realizing the true nature of one’s inner circle and those that can bring real happiness. Lack of self-awareness is evident in King Lear predominantly within the main character King Lear. Lack of self-awareness is evident within the king through the beginning acts of the play. Lear makes many tragic mistakes due to his absence of self-awareness that he obtains. The lack of self-awareness ultimately leads to madness. Once one overcomes their madness they come to realize what truly makes them happy. Lear becomes self-aware of the things that give pure happiness. Lear is deceived by his absence of self-awareness.
Self-awareness is absent in Lear through the beginning few acts on the play. The absence of Lear’s self-awareness is recognized based on numerous events. At the beginning of the play, Lear, the king of Britain, comes up with what he thought to be a brilliant idea of splitting his kingdom into three parts, one for each daughter. Lear has decided to pre-maturely divid his kingdom in hopes to resolving any future arguments after he has deceased. Lear explains how he will split the kingdom amongst his daughters:
Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.
Give me the map there. Now that we have divided
In three our kingdom …
To shake all cares and business from our age,
Conferring them on younger strengths while we
Unburdened crawl towards death. (1.1. 37-42)...

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... Since Lear was egotistical and lacked self-awareness, he was not willing to accept others input, making him find out for himself who is the root to his happiness. Lear suffers through his madness to realize who can bring him true happiness.

Self-awareness is difficult to develop within a person. The play King Lear is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare that develops multiple characters throughout the play with downfalls and valuable lessons learned. Lear obtains a lack of self-awareness; due to this Lear makes many selfish mistakes. From a lack of self-awareness Lear becomes “mad” because he is unable to cope with all of his faults. When Lear is mad he comes to realize the ones that truly love him, and can grant him happiness. Unable to see his own faults, Lear proceeds to madness resulting in the realization of the people who can grant him true happiness.

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