King Leaar And Gloucester Comparison Essay

Throughout Shakespeare's story of King Lear, readers might see a similarity between King Lear and Gloucester. Initially, you feel as if King Lear and Gloucester are, in a sense, bad people for abandoning the individuals that care about them the most. King Lear banishes his daughter Cordelia because she doesn’t express her love for Lear the way he wants her to and he also banishes Kent for standing up for Cordelia in saying that she truly loves Lear the most. Gloucester banishes his son Edgar because he is manipulated by his illegitimate son Edmund into thinking that Edgar is trying to murder him so that he can take his throne. In the beginning, I feel as if King Lear is insecure and has poor judgment while Gloucester is easily influenced and very naive. Towards the end of the play, my opinions on both Lear and Gloucester changed. I began to feel sympathy towards them once they started going through traumatic events. Towards the end of the play, King Lear becomes a humble and caring individual while Gloucester later proves how he is capable of great bravery. In the end, it seems as though both Lear and Gloucester die from the guilt and sorrow that comes from the traumatic events that they experience. One might suggest that they both die from a broken heart.
In the beginning of the play, Lear exhibits his poor judgement and insecurities when he brings in his three daughters to see who he will give his kingdom to. The test that he puts his daughters through demonstrates that he desires a false public display of love over real love. He doesn’t ask “which of you doth love us most,” instead he says, “which of you shall we say doth love us most?” (Shakespeare, 11). Most readers would say that Lear is simply blind to the truth. Some wo...

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..., but the most important thing is how you learn from making that bad decision and using that experience to better yourself as a person. Although they both start off the story seeming very selfish and irresponsible, they turn out to show that they truly do have a good heart and show sympathy towards the people that they initially abandoned. My impressions of them change dramatically during the course of the play. In the beginning of the play I have no remorse for Lear or Gloucester. I am against them in the beginning simply because they were blind to the fact that they were pushing away the people that meant the most to them. When I began seeing how badly Lear and Gloucester were being treated by their “evil” children, I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for them. It made me realize that people do make mistakes and all we can do from that point on is learn from them.