Essay about Filial Ingratitude in Shakespeare's King Lear

The power that makes Edmund corrupt is trust. He uses the trust to manipulate and control his father for the benefit of himself. He frames his brother by composing a false letter to his father implicating a plot to kill Gloucester, that when “our father would sleep till I waked him, you should enjoy half his revenue forever.” (1, 2, 55-56) Gloucester replies with “this villain of mine comes under the prediction of mine: there’s son against father” (1, 2, 112-117) This shows that Gloucester had great faith and trust in his son Edgar. To better his plan he goes to Edgar and convinces him to run away. The thought that he would frame his own brother for the chance to gain power shows his corruption, and that he will do anything to have more power. Edmund writes another letter, except this implicates his father in a plot with France to kill The Duke of Cornwall. He does this so that “the younger rises [and] the old doth fall” (3, 4, 25) and he will become the Earl. Edmund is so corrupted and blinded by his quest for power that he is willing to jeopardize his father’s

Shakespeare's good characters, in the play King Lear, are considered good because they are loyal even when they are disguised from or unrecognizable by those to whom they owe loyalty. In addition, their loyalty does not waver even when they are banished or mistreated by those to whom they are loyal. Cordelia, Edgar and Kent are all characters that exemplify this goodness and unwavering loyalty.

Shakespeare's King Lear is a play which shows the consequences of one man's decisions. The audience follows the main character, Lear, as he makes decisions that disrupt order in his Kingdom. When Lear surrenders all his power and land to his daughters as a reward for their demonstration of love towards him, the breakdown on order in evident. Lear's first mistake is to divide his Kingdom into three parts. A Kingdom is run best under one ruler as only one decision is made without contradiction. Another indication that order is disrupted is the separation of Lear's family. Lear's inability to control his anger causes him to banish his youngest daughter, Cordelia, and loyal servant, Kent. This foolish act causes Lear to become vulnerable to

Though the actions of Regan and Goneril mirror the king's, in that they banish King Lear, just as he banishes Cordelia and Kent, their sin against their father is worse than his sin against Cordelia and Kent. King Lear bases his daughters' love on superficial characteristics, he banishes Kent and Cordelia – his own daughter – and clings to his pride, not desiring to give up the title "King" even after he has yielded his power to his

In his tragedy King Lear, William Shakespeare presents two families: a family consisting of a father and his three daughters, and a family consisting of a father and his two sons, one of which is a bastard son. While he has the sons basically come out and admit that one of them is good and the other evil, the Bard chooses to have the feelings of the daughters appear more subtlely. At no point in King Lear does Shakespeare come out and blatantly tell his audience that Cordelia is the most caring and loving daughter, while her two sisters are uncaring and greedy, and love their father only when they stand to gain from it. However, via the three daughters’ speeches throughout King Lear, he does

     In King Lear, the subplot of Gloucester corresponds to the major plot of King Lear. Both fathers have their own loyal legitimate child and their evil and disloyal child. They are both honourable men, who have children that return to them in their time of need. Gloucester and Lear are both tormented, and their

In the play King Lear, the two characters Gloucester and King Lear, both run on very parallel paths. the turning point in the play where the reader starts to feel sorry for them is as soon as things start to go bad for them. Early in the play, Lear makes bad decisions on which daughters to give his land and power to, while Gloucester is making Edmund feel bad for being a bastard. Their decisions blow up in their faces and the reader starts to feel bad for them. King Lear is driven to madness and Gloucester has his eyes gouged out and want to kill himself. The impressions on both of these characters change throughout the course of the play in the same way.

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.

Starting the play with the revelation of Edmund’s plans to see his half brother and father’s downfall, we receive an image of a father who cares only for pure bloods of higher class per say. One can conclude that this man is obviously high class and stereo typically favors the older, direct bloodline son, nevertheless, we can’t take a rash conclusion so fast. Thus, we wait for the plot to develop and let us glance into the true selves of the characters further. We come to the knowledge that Lord Gloucester realizes he values his ties with the king to a great extent, him risking and losing his title as lord due to aiding King Lear. Afterwards, we see him come to appreciation of virtues of honesty and his sons after he is captured by the Duke, losing his eyes as punishment. Gloucester as a character has developed greatly, going forth through challenges and misdemeanors against his pride and being, ending disgraced and blind. Yet, he holds a calm sense to himself, valuing what he has left and becoming more than humble with others. This is a transformation worthy of Shakespeare himself, rather impressive at the very least. This man has lived through the betrayal of his bastard child and being blinded violently for helping a distressed king, he has sacrificed much with spiritual values in return. Astounding that he didn’t suicide out of pure remorse that he will never be able to witness the world again. Unfortunately, he does die of a mixture of happiness and shock when he is revealed that Edgar still breathes life, so he has that going for

Furthermore, King Lear suffers a loss of power which causes him to reveal his true nature when his powers as King and as a father are departed and he is able to see the innocence behind his daughter, Cordelia's, love for him. He is reunited with Cordelia and instantly compelled to beg for her forgiveness: "We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage./ When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down/ And ask of thee forgiveness. So we'll live,/ And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh..." (5.3.9-12). This is unveils King Lear's truly humble and loving nature. In summary, because Cordelia, Gloucester and King Lear all suffer a loss of power in the play, their true natures are ultimately revealed.

Loyalty is being faithful to commitments and obligations. On the other hand there are many ways to display loyalty. One can be loyal to a person, political party, country, religion, or cause. The list is seemingly endless. William Shakespeare’s play King Lear exhibits many forms of loyalty, but one that shines particularly is loyalty to ones selfish needs. However there is a limit to loyalty which most over look. The characters Cordelia, the emotional King Lear, and the vile Edmund all manifest their loyalty to their own self, and all meet their demise. The limit to loyalty is death.

In these situations, the cast confronts instances of betrayal and eventually self-growth. The story initiates with King Lear’s urgency for flattery, which drives him to commit a decision that instigated the power-hungry course of his daughters. The betrayal of Goneril and Regan caused Lear to separate from his man-made principles and praise those of nature. Besides the change in Lear, the audience also observed Gloucester’s position concerning the legitimacy of his two sons. Societal views were a detriment regarding the rights of illegitimate children, like Edmund. Seeing his brother Edgar conquer all his father’s treasures, Edmund left his praise of nature behind and instead exploited the reliance of status and relationships in his royal family to overcome the laws of society, forming a great deception against his own family.

As it turns out, there is no loyalties within each other. In [Act 5 scene 3] Goneril has poisoned her own sister, in hopes of capturing Edmund's love. However, Edgar and Cordelia are exceptions to this generalization. Their actions are very noble and they show great amounts of integrity. In the beginning of [Act 4 scene 1] Gloucester has decided to end his own life. Edgar, knowing his father's intentions,

In Act one, scene one, we are introduced to Gloucester and his parallel plot line before we introduced to Lear. We find Gloucester acknowledging his equal adoration between his two sons, the one legitimate, the other illegitimate. The moral code that informs King Lear dictates that illegitimacy bodes nothing but a disadvantage to the harmony of underlying order . Within the terms of the play, Gloucester's emotion is a fatal flaw of judgment. Paying close attention to language, Gloucester's unwitting mistake from Edmund's very first appearance; in a world where the only vocabulary of each character is a full expression of their position on the axis of good and evil, a reader cannot help but notice that Edmund's "... I shall study deserving..."(I.i.24) is a foreboding of the deceit and greed that will taint him for the rest of the play.