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

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

Lear's insanity increases throughout the play, demonstrated to the audience through more speeches, until his emotions overthrow his reason at the climax of the play. Lear randomly shouts in to the storm,

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

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:

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

Of the deaths in Shakespeare’s King Lear, the death of Cordelia and King Lear at the end of Act V are most significant in revealing the development of Lear and how his development contributes to the theme surrounding it. The dynamic King Lear is a tragic hero whose fatal flaw, arrogance, prompts his removal from power and eventually the death of both himself and Cordelia. However, by the time of King Lear’s death, his arrogance has been replaced with a compassion which allows him to mourn the death of Cordelia and die from his own grief. Besides redeeming himself for his flawed judgement, the compassionate King Lear of Act V recognizes the loyalty in characters like Kent and Cordelia, while also seeing through the dishonesty of Regan and Goneril which fools the King Lear of Act I. King Lear’s transition from disowning Cordelia because of his arrogance to recognizing her as his only faithful daughter is demonstrated through Lear’s death, which serves as the culmination of his development and a reversal of his character. Furthermore, his death elaborates the theme of how someone’s arrogance may blind them from the reality of others’ intentions, which can be seen through a more compassionate and humble lens.

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.

At the beginning of “King Lear,” an authoritative and willful protagonist dominates his court, making a fateful decision by rewarding his two treacherous daughters and banishing his faithful one in an effort to preserve his own pride. However, it becomes evident during the course of the tragedy that this protagonist, Lear, uses his power only as a means of projecting a persona, which he hides behind as he struggles to maintain confidence in himself. This poses a problem, since the audience is prevented from feeling sympathy for the king. Shakespeare’s ironic solution is to allow Lear’s progressing madness to be paired with his recognition of truth, thereby forcing Lear to shed his persona, and

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

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

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

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 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

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.

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