King Lear Anyalsis II

At the beginning of the play, we see Lear as a proud, vain, and rash old king, not necessarily evil, but not good either. His egotism in dividing up his kingdom according to which daughters praise him the most leads to the disownment of the one daughter and servant who truly care for him, and the revelation that Regan and Goneril’s profession of love for him was merely empty praise. Turned away by both Regan and Goneril, Lear rages against a storm, and bellows “I am a man more sinned against than sinning” (Act III, scene 2, 56-57). Lear refuses to accept fully the fact that his suffering is of his own making.

The storm upon which Lear rages is itself a metaphor for Lear’s growing madnes

s and rage. When Lear declares, “No, I’ll not weep / I have full cause of weeping, but this heart / Shall break into a thousand flaws / Or ere I’ll weep. O Fool, I shall go mad!” (Act II, scene 4, 325-328), it shows that as Lear’s heart breaks into a hundred thousand pieces, nature will also in the form of rain, thunder, and lightning. This disorder of nature is also reflected when Kent says, “Since I was a man, / Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder, / Such groans of roaring wind and rain I never / Remember to have heard, Man’s nature cannot carry / Th’ affiction nor the fear” (Act III, scene 2, 47-51). Nature and man are in turmoil and out of control. When Lear yells, “And thou, all-shaking / thunder, / Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ th’ world. / Crack Nature’s molds, all germens spill at once, / That make ingrateful man!” (Act III, scene 2, 7-11), he begins to view the storm as a manifestation of the gods, who have come to punish the world. Shakespeare uses onomatopoeia with words such as crack and strike to obtain a poetic effect that displays the storm-like and turbulent nature of Lear’s mind.

Finally, the other main character to suffer from blindness is Albany. Albany’s blindness was in not seeing Goneril for who she was, and not speaking out against her actions. He was also blind to the affair she was having with Edmund, and their plot to kill him. Only after reading Edgars letter outlining Goneril and Edmunds plot was he able to confront Goneril, “You are not worth the dust which the rude wind / Blows in your face. (I fear your disposition / That nature which contemns its origin / Cannot be bordered certain in itself. / She that herself will sliver and disbranch / From her material sap perforce must wither / And come to deadly use” (Act IV, scene 2, 39-45).

When Kent begs Lear to go inside a hovel for shelter from the raging storm, Lear replies, “No, I will weep no more. [In such a night / To shut me out? Pour on. I will endure]” (act III, scene 4, 20-21. He would rather bear the f

Some topics in this essay:
Act III, Act IV, Gloucester Lear, King Lear, Act II, Goneril Edmunds, Finally Lear, Act Edmund, Goneril Oswald, Goneril Regan, scene 2, iv scene, iii scene, act iv, act iv scene, act iii scene, act iii, iii scene 2, scene 4, wheel fortune, king lear, act scene, storm lear, iv scene 1, act scene 3,