Parental Blindness in King Lear
As Shakespeare presents to us a tragic pattern of parental and filial love, in which a prosperous man is devested of power and finally recognises his "folly", empathy is induced in the audience. In "King Lear", it is noted from the beginning of the play that both Lear and Gloucester suffer from self-approbation and will consequently find revelation by enduring "the rack of this tough world". While Lear mistakenly entrusts the shallow professions of love from his "thankless" daughters - Goneril and Regan - instead of the selfless words of Cordelia, Gloucester shadows a similar ignorance by initially entrusting love in the evil Edmund, rather than Edgar, whom we consider to be a "truly" loyal "noble gentlemen".
Undeniably, both parents misjudge appearance for reality, as it is only in this way that they can "let the great gods that keep this dreadful pudder O'er [their] heads / Find out their enemies" where "all vengeance comes too short". When Lear is rejected by Goneril and Regan and stripped of his "hundred Knights and squires", he is left with "nothing" in the wilderness, besides the loyal company of Kent and the Fool, and later on, Edgar and Gloucester. It appears that at this stage he senses his "folly", that he "did [Cordelia] wrong". But Lear has yet to gain full insight. Although, before entering the hovel, he realises that he has been a "man more sinned against sinning", the process of self-discovery is not complete until all truth is unveiled. As Lear realises his foolishness in bannishing Cordelia - his "joy" and the only daughter who truly loves him - we sense Lear's increasing sorrow and despair. By revealling his "sin", he is subjecting himself to punishment. Perhaps it is a deserving motion, since he had passed judgement and punished Kent and Cordelia for coming between "the dragon and his wrath", that is, him and his power. Now the gods above rightfully control Lear's destiny, abiding by the process that man has to suffer to gain peace.
At this particular moment, Lear is still unaware of Kent's identity, disguised as Caius, ever since he bannished Kent for defending Cordeila's thoughtful choice to "love and be silent". We understand that the disguise is a way in which Kent can protect and continually serve the "poor, weak and infirm" Lear. Lear begins to accomplish understanding through the change in his contemptuous behaviour to a sympathetic learning man.
Through Lear, Shakespeare expertly portrays the inevitability of human suffering. The “little nothings,” seemingly insignificant choices that Lear makes over the course of the play, inevitably evolve into unstoppable forces that change Lear’s life for the worse. He falls for Goneril’s and Regan’s flattery and his pride turns him away from Cordelia’s unembellished affection. He is constantly advised by Kent and the Fool to avoid such choices, but his stubborn hubris prevents him from seeing the wisdom hidden in the Fool’s words: “Prithee, tell him, so much the rent of his land comes to: he will not believe a fool” (Shakespeare 21). This leads to Lear’s eventual “unburdening,” as foreshadowed in Act I. This unburdening is exacerbated by his failure to recognize and learn from his initial mistakes until it is too late. Lear’s lack of recognition is, in part, explained by his belief in a predestined life controlled completely by the gods: “It is the stars, the stars above us govern our conditions” (Shakespeare 101). The elder characters in King Lear pin their various sufferings on the will of...
... Lears blessing, and declared his daughter. Lear also realized that Kents speaking out was for Lear’s best and that he too was abused and banished. What stings Lear even more is that he is now completely dependent upon his two shameless daughters, Goneril and Regan. Plus that he must now beg them when he took care of them like a father when they were once children, to drive Lears further into madness he realizes that as king he was so ignorant and blind with power that he never took care of the homeless and let them suffer. All these realization and the fact that Lear is in his second childhood a tender stage drive him into the peak of madness.
...ne encounters when trying to use an Aristotlean theory, a Christian formula, or the Renaissance tradition to interpret the play. In particular, the Christian formula fails because redemption does not accomplish anything. Edmund's forgiveness leads to Cordelia's death; no one is redeemed. Also, he points out the problems in viewing Cordelia as an "innocent who dies for everyone else's sins" (231); namely, that her death causes Lear only despair. He also disagrees with pessimistic critics view King Lear as a completely meaningless play. Despite the sadness in the end, the "bad" characters have all died, and a "good" character will rule England.
The area formula was mainly put into practice to calculate the area of the middle sections of the prism and the area of the regular polygon bases, whereas the perimeter formula was put into practice to calculate the perimeter of the regular polygon bases. The investigation was divided into 3 main parts. The first two parts primarily considered solving the topic question and developing the shortcut formula, whereas the third part considered testing the findings from part 1 & 2 on special prisms called ‘Platonic Solids’.
The distrust is evident in the play, as, many instances of questioning of the child’s parentage occurred. When Goneril threatens to dismiss Lear’s knights, Lear asks her, “Are you our daughter?” (1.4.224) Lear cannot believe that his own daughter is asking him to tolerate this indignity, and attributes that only someone else’s child would treat him so, doubting his wife’s faithfulness to his marriage. Gloucester also claims to have “never got [Edgar]” (2.1.91) as he is convinced that Edgar is plotting to murder him. He accuses his wife of infidelity as he also presumes that a child he fathered would not want to commit such an aberrant offence against him. When Regan meets Lear at Gloucester’s castle Lear tell her that if she were not glad to see him, he would “divorce [himself] from [Regan’s] mother’s tomb” (2.4.147) as that would be “sepulch’ring an adult’ress” (2.4.149). Lear is saying that if Regan is not glad to see him, she would not be his child and therefore, his wife would be an adulteress. Lear and Gloucester both assume that no impertinence would spring from their own children, and that any misconduct from their supposed children are due to the lack of blood bond between the father and the child. Since, in the time of the play, a mother is the only person who knows who actually fathered her child, whereas men can never ascertain the true heritage of their children, Lear and Gloucester’s blaming their children’s impropriety on their mother’s faithfulness clearly exhibit their distrust for
The point of departure of Lear into the unknown of existence is seen when he plunges himself into the harshness and relentlessness of nature. While immersed in the storm, Lear has been reduced to the bare essentials of man, he has lost those that he perceived as loving, and despite being accompanied by the Fool and Kent, Lear is more alone than he has ever been. The daughters he thought who loved him abandoned him and have taken his kingdom. The daughter who truly loved him was banished by his irrationality; Lear is alone. The presence of the Fool and Edgar should not necessarily be looked upon as that of a companion, but rather as catalyst for Lear’s progression. As for Kent, his presence is barely felt by Lear. Lear’s isolation is critical for his progression. Similar to Sartre’s Roquentin in Nausea, isolation and loneliness are the foundations for becoming existentially aware. “The tempest in my mind/ Doth from my senses take all feeling else”(III, iv 13-14)[1] Lear is completely alone in the universe, abandoned by love and cloistered from all outside emotion; he is now prepared to perceive the realit...
But not only are Lear and Gloucester blind to those around him, they are blind to their responsibilities. Gloucester's adultery leads to the illegitimate Edmund who causes strife in his kingdom. Lear's abdication of the throne and handing over of power to self serving individuals, feeling entitled to a “retirement”, leads to his downfall, it is also apparent that Lear was blind to the needs of his people during his reign as evidenced by his remorse over not taking care of the less fortunate after his encounter on the moor. The theme of blindness is omnipresent in Lear and should be regarded as something of a cautionary message against our own blindness.
The first major betrayal seen is when Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia proclaim their love for their father when he asks them how much they love him. Their answers determine how much of Lear 's land they will be given. Goneril replies to Lear 's question with, “Sir, I love you more than word can wield the matter/ Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty…” (I.i.56-57). It is almost as though this response is vacant and well prepared. It shows her true intentions, which is to please her father and gain power through her dishonesty. Similarly, her wicked sister Regan responds just as flatteringly. It is quickly seen that Goneril and Regan do not truly love their father as their rise in power comes from their betrayal of Lear. Goneril states, “then must we look to receive from his age/ not alone the imperfections of long-engraffed condition” (I.i.297-298). Here, Goneril and Regan are plotting against Lear, they know that he is impulsive and aging which could play to their advantage in taking his power and all his land. Ultimately, the betrayal of their father helps them gain power that Lear never even had and soon they become greedy, wanting everything they desire. Evidently, the sister 's betrayal is the greatest in the play as they take all the power from Lear and cause irreversible suffering of their father and others. As the play progresses
Shakespeare's King Lear tells of the tragedies of two families. At the head of each family is a father who cannot see his children for what they are. Both fathers are lacking in perceptiveness, so the stories of the two families run parallel to each other. In Lear's case, two of his daughters fool him into believing their lies. Lear shuts out his third daughter because she cannot her love into words the way he wants her to. Gloucester, similarly, forbids the son that truly loves him, while putting all his trust into the son who betrays him. Both Lear and Gloucester lack the direction and insight that it takes to see reality, instead they see only physically. Lear does not realize his daughter's true feelings until it is too late. Gloucester must loose his physical sight in order to gain the type of vision that he needs to see his son's betrayal. Shakespeare uses Gloucester's realization of reality and Lear's inability to see with his heart to portray his theme of blindness.
Lear’s scheming older daughters, Goneril and Regan, respond to his test with flattery, telling him in wildly overblown terms that they love him more than anything else. But Cordelia, Lear’s youngest (and favorite) daughter, refuses to speak. When pressed, she says that she cannot “heave her heart into her mouth,” that she loves him exactly as much as a daughter should love her father, and that her sisters wouldn’t have husbands if they loved their father as much as they say (I.i.90–91). In response, Lear flies into a rage, disowns Cordelia, and divides her share of the kingdom between her two sisters.
As Shakespeare picked some characters to show poetic justice, he whispers the social and divine justice through King Lear. Firstly, Lear is uninterested to the fights; as he slowly make changes in his mind, Lear becomes more sensitive and obtain humility, proving the change in King Lear.
(CITE THIS FROM BOOK). He beings to see that (O’Driscoll, 2009) ‘power and wealth cover up the fact that everyone is weak and helpless underneath. He is beginning to develop a social conscience. ‘ Upon meeting with poor Tom (Edgar in diskize) he is better able to empathize with him o the extent that he too strips off his clothes. For until this point Lear has never put much thought into the people of his land and he beings to feel great shame in not helping them when he had been
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 ...
Cordelia, Lear’s favorite daughter tells him, “Why have my sisters husbands if they say they love you all?” (King Lear, Act 1 Scene 1 Line 109) Cordelia knows that Goneril, Regan and their husbands just told Lear that they love him just to flatter him to give them part of the country. Cordelia sees the reality and how her sisters are lying to her father. In fact, Lear soon realize that Goneril and Regan were buttering up to him when they kick him out of their castle. “And speak ‘t again, my lord. No more with me” (King Lear, Act 2 Scene 4 Line 293). Lear needed a place to stay with his soldiers but Goneril and Regan tells him to reduce the number of soldiers or else, he can’t stay. Lear realizes that Goneril and Regan has lied to him about their love for him and that Cordelia was right, which leads him into the storm and regretting about what he did to Cordelia. Ultimately, after Cornwall plucks Gloucester’s eyes, Regan tells Gloucester that Edmund is the one who told on him to Cornwall. So Gloucester finally knows the truth, “O my follies! Then Edgar was abused” (King Lear, Act 3 Scene 7 Line 111). Subsequently, Gloucester is punished for not trusting his own son, and not even asking Edgar if it was true that Edgar was trying to kill
In acceptance of helplessness, the characters ironically experience growth, joy, and hope. If the world of Lear is chaotic, painful, and alien, it also stimulates growth. The king with no kingdom discovers the superficial authority that was his kingship, and understood “They flatter’d me like a dog...they told me I was everything. ‘Tis a lie” (Shakespeare IV. vi. 96-105). When Lear had finally accepted his inability to change a situation, he looks upon his life with a new-found wisdom. Lear’s progress to acceptance is also marked by the shift of dependence from evil children to good, from Regan and Goneril to Cordelia. The schematic character groupings of good and evil invites us to see the children on a metaphorically level of shifting stages. When Lear is reunited with Cordelia, though he is faced with impending death, he blissfully proclaims “Come, let’s away to prison...so we’ll live / And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh / At gilded butterflies” (Shakespeare V. iii. 8-19). Lear is, for the first time in the play, truly happy. The King beautifully expresses an idea of acceptance against uncontrollable forces. The prison that Lear speaks of is not a literal one, but rather his response to the approaching end of his life, as it should be for all of us, to pray, to sing, to tell tales, to laugh, to be above the battle of life. Similarity, Gloucester,