Death's Immanence In Life in Shakespeare's King Lear Essay

King Lear shows an extreme of human suffering. While there is some foreshadowing to the tragic end of the play and

Such as the storm seeming somewhat apocalyptic and Lear wearing a crown of thorns and thus resembling Jesus. Another theme which once explored can help with understanding the religious qualities of King Lear is that of divine justice. It is clear that sinning is punished in the play. Evil may triumph for a time and cause immense suffering but within itself it carries the seeds of its own destruction and therefore will eventually fail.

Nature plays the utmost largest role in this play. We can begin with the orating of nature through Lear relinquishing his crown and dividing his power among his daughters. It is here that Lear states his intentions “ to shake all cares and business from our age,”(l.l.40) in order to “ unburthened crawl towards death.”(l.l.42) Although, it was not in the intentions of King Lear to wreak havoc on his kingdom, he did so by relinquishing his crown. Therefore, subsequently leading his kingdom to an ironic flow of catastrophic events. It was impossible for Lear to stop being king due to the fact that it was his rightful position and he acknowledges this by stating:

In King Lear, Lear’s conflict of power with his daughters is brought about by his own arrogance, which flaws his judgement and propels his change of heart. When Lear parcels out his kingdom to his daughters, he finds the honesty of Cordelia’s praise to be ungrateful and

Due to this flaw, Lear has given way to the two older daughters to conspire against him.  Lear is finally thrown out of his daughters’ homes and left with a fool, a servant and a beggar. This is when Lear realizes the mistake that he has made and suffers the banishment of his two eldest daughters.  Lear is caught in a storm and begins to lose his sanity because he can not bear the treatment of his two daughters as well as the error he has made with Cordelia and Kent.  Lear also suffers from lack of rest when he is moving all over the place and the thing that breaks him is the death of his youngest daughter, Cordelia.  This suffering can be contrasted with other happier times like when Lear was still king and when he was not banished by his two daughters.

The entire play is built around one man’s laziness. As the play commences one may question why Lear would decide to prematurely give up his kingdom. It is quite possible that he transferred his authorities before it was

Yet, his blindness of knowledge is not the only factor leads him to this sudden downfall, from the king to a “despised old man”. His lack of sight also prevents him to catch other people’s personality, he judges weather the people are good or evil just by the surface appearances. One example is that Lear banishes his once most beloved daughter, Cordelia. She is the only loyal daughter of Lear’s who has seen her sister’s false love presentations for Lear and does not want to bracket together her true love with

At this point in the play, King Lear has completely lost his sanity and is yelling at his surroundings during a storm. Upon saying these words, he takes off all his clothes and declares himself free of the trappings of civilisation. The importance of this quote lies in the symbolism of nakedness. Nakedness is representative of many things, including insanity and loss of status. As stated before, Lear’s insanity is at its

King Lear's View of Himself "King Lear" is a play all about the cruelty of human nature and the ways in which all people, "good" and "bad", can sin, or be sinned against. Lear is a very difficult character to categorise as either "good" or "bad" as he is both "sinned against" and "sinning". It is also very difficult to use these sins as a measure of his character as they a varying in severity. When we first meet Lear he is in the process of dividing his kingdom into three, preparing to hand it to his three daughters. This is a sin, as according to The Divine Right of Kings, each monarch is chosen by God, and is there fore answerable to none but him.

Lear’s death scene shows the greatest contrast between the child he was at the beginning of the play and the man he has become as he can finally see, in a sense. He finally recognises those around him, both literally and figuratively. He sees that Caius is actually Kent, but he also realizes that Kent has been thoroughly loyal to him despite Lear banishing him in rage. He sees that Goneril and Regan have never seen him as anything more than a means to gain wealth and, in turn, scarcely acknowledges their death. And, most importantly, he sees that Cordelia truly loved him and that she - in her love for him and constant loyalty - is not his lesser or even equal, but his better. He

Lear has been driven mad because of his own poor choices and decisions he has taken in his life. His blindness to Gonoril and Regan’s false flattery and his inability to see Cordelia’s real affection has led to his insanity. When he goes mad, the turmoil in his mind reflects the disorder that has descended upon his kingdom. However, his madness teaches him humility and provides him with important nuggets of wisdom by reducing him to his bare humanity, stripped of all royal pretensions. There is a dramatic value in Lear's madness whose roots lie in his moral and spiritual defects, and the cure is his moral regeneration which has come late. Madness is a central theme in King Lear’s characters between the ones that act in an insane way that are the wisest, and the sane characters that act in a foolish and unreasonable way. Lear’s madness is real compared to Edgar’s which is feigned as Hamlet’s. Edgar who has been the victim of a brother’s treachery perfectly enacts the role of a fool in his

could never realize this if he had not gone mad.  His madness brings him to

The locations in Shakespeare’s King Lear fall into three categories: inside a court, out in nature, and in-between nature and civilization. Lear himself also wavers between three states: sanity, senility, and the fine line between the two. These states of consciousness relate directly to the scenes’ locations. However, Lear’s insanity is not the fault of his location in the world; for the most part, he has control over his situation. The series of events in correspondence with the location show that man must acknowledge the nature he originated from and live in the civilized world, but not abandon nature all together because too much control or chaos leads to despair.

Lear admits to the psychological weakness of trying to hold onto his pride through his daughters –his distorted definition of himself. We are once again

King Lear initially gives the reader a bleak and lonely impression . People suffer unjusly and are killed without remourse. Albany points out that if left alone by the gods ''humanity must preforce prey on itself / like monsters of the deep'' expressing that justice and humanity don't house comfortably together. It is an eminant question , How can there be meaning in life if there is no justice? Lear himself alludes poetically to this when upon cordelias death he asks'' why should a dog, a horse , a rat have life/ and thou no breath at all ?''. Life is unfair.