Questions of personal responsibility, free will, and justice move our sympathies through a work of literature, causing readers to relate with or despise characters as they are shaped within a piece. In The Tragedy of King Lear, William Shakespeare draws our support for his villains as well as his heroes, asking us to explore what drives someone to action. We are invited ... usurp his former power: blatantly through their inheritance and more subtly by trying to separate Lear from his one hundred knights, who symbolized honor to the old man. Yet this is fitting for the father who played his d...

• Word Count: 2076
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School