King Lear - With a play as complex and multi - leveled as King Lear, it is very difficult to assess whether Shakespeare's view of life is either pessimistic or optimistic. Without a doubt, there are many good arguments supporting both sides. Because there are such an array of forces at work on the character in Lear, as well as so many separate and interrelated themes, one can not help but wonder whether it was even Shakespeare's intention to express a strictly pessimistic or optimistic view. Perhaps Shakespeare was alluding to something which, although encompassing both opimism and pessimism, transcended them both. He was explaining what it was to be human. Through this perception of King Lear, we can say that the play is both bleak and hopeful, because it asserts that there is no meaning in life but puts man as the master of the world, instead of omnipotent justice dispensing 'higher powers'.
King Lear gives the reader a bleak and lonely impression. People suffer unjustly and are killed by heartbreak. Albany points out that if left alone by the gods, "Humanity must perforce prey on itself / like monsters of the deep," expressing that justice and humanity do not house comfortably together. And how can there be meaning or purpose in life if there is no justice? Lear himself alludes poetically to this when upon Cordelia's death he asks, "Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life / And thou no breath at all?" He also realizes that "I am a man more sinned against than sinning" when it is made obvious that the punishment for his mistake in scene one is harsher than it should be, making it unjust...
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..., man must make the best of his existence. Nowhere in the play is there a stronger message of hope - amidst all of the suffering and chaos in the world, Lear and Cordelia will sing. This is why, perhaps, Shakespeare wrote Lear's death the way he did - the fallen king dies thinking that maybe, just maybe, his beautiful daughter has life.
King Lear shows us, rather than expressing a stauchly pessimistic or optimistic opinion of life, that man can order his life in any way he chooses, for better or for worse. Since there are no guiding gods or prevailing justice in man's cruel existence, the only thing he can do is hope. For if he realizes that hs is in control of his own destiny, perhaps he will be able to change his life for the better, and make it worth dying for.
The play of "King Lear" is about a search for personal identity. In the historical period in which this play is set, the social structure was set in order of things closest to Heaven. Therefore, on Earth, the king was at the top, followed by his noblemen and going all the way down to the basest of objects such as rocks and dirt. This structure was set up by the people, and by going by the premise that anything that is man made is imperfect, this system cannot exist for long without conflict.
Short-term deterrence works in the here and now, moments such as a murderer just had the death sentence carried out deterring that criminal from acting again and spreading a fresh fear through other criminal minds of the risk that is in play with committing certain criminal acts against society. The short-term deterrence acts more like a word of caution, causing offenders and citizens alike to think or re-evaluate before doing due to the fear of death. Long-term deterrence, also known as general prevention, is more of a concept that must be true in order for the concept of deterrence to work within individuals and work in society and criminals alike. That concept is “that the existence of the death penalty for a crime has a ‘moralizing’ influence on people’s perceptions of the gravity of the crime,
In Act I Scene I, the first glimmer of hope is revealed in the play at a
...reas William Shakespeare's King Lear explores themes of regret and isolation. it is apparent that both texts show the relevance of death and its affect on human behaviour. Death is a permanent fixture on the minds of human beings. People are faced with it on an almost daily basis. Watching natural disasters kill thousands of people, or watching soldiers come home to be buried, gives humans a humble understanding that life is short and death is near. Will people ever come to accept death the way Morrie had? It is not clear what the correct way to live life is. Everyone has their own path to follow, their own beliefs, and their own ideas of death. It is up to oneself to decide if they will live in fear and isolation, or start loving and forgiving those around them. These two stories truly show the different perspectives regarding death. What will your perspective be?
Promoting gender equity in STEM courses in high school is a crucial step in the direction of postsecondary achievement in related careers. But all too often, students Students are often afraid to try something new and of failing in front of others. Students who chronically under-perform in math and science, thinking they are not competent to excel in these subjects, are at risk of giving up.
Webster’s Dictionary defines equity as “freedom from bias or favoritism.” (“Merriam Webster,” 1996.) More specifically, “gender equity is parity between males and females in the quality, of life, academic, and work outcomes valued by our society.” (Sanders & Tescoine, 2002, p.99-115) To achieve gender equity in all aspects is the goal of these programs. The field attempts to create strategies and programs and then evaluate their success. People who evaluate this field would consider it successful when both males and females are given the same opportunities despite stereotypical gender qualities. They would like to see fewer job fields that are dominated by only one gender. (Sanders & Tescoine, 2002, p.99-115) In the 1960s, during the Second Feminist Movement, gender equity became a major issue that concerned feminists. (Bank, 1997, p. 4)
Through Lear, Shakespeare expertly portrays the inevitability of human suffering. The “little nothings,” seemingly insignificant choices that Lear makes over the course of the play, inevitably evolve into unstoppable forces that change Lear’s life for the worse. He falls for Goneril’s and Regan’s flattery and his pride turns him away from Cordelia’s unembellished affection. He is constantly advised by Kent and the Fool to avoid such choices, but his stubborn hubris prevents him from seeing the wisdom hidden in the Fool’s words: “Prithee, tell him, so much the rent of his land comes to: he will not believe a fool” (Shakespeare 21). This leads to Lear’s eventual “unburdening,” as foreshadowed in Act I. This unburdening is exacerbated by his failure to recognize and learn from his initial mistakes until it is too late. Lear’s lack of recognition is, in part, explained by his belief in a predestined life controlled completely by the gods: “It is the stars, the stars above us govern our conditions” (Shakespeare 101). The elder characters in King Lear pin their various sufferings on the will of...
Absolute in every child’s mind is the belief that they are right, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Until children grow up to raise children own their own, a parent’s disputation only inflates that desire to prove. Part and parcel to this, as one may find out through personal experience or by extension, cruelty towards parents is a reflection of a child’s own inadequacy (whether in large or small scale). In this sense, King Lear is a story of children with a desire to break past their hierarchal status. Whether it is the belief that a woman shall take a husband, and with that guard her inherited land, or what role bastards truly deserves in a society that preemptively condemns them. Cruelty at the hands of children accounts for almost
...world has been turned upside-down, his master has now slipped into absolute madness and is beyond the fool’s help. He no longer serves a purpose to the king, and predicts both his, and - as he has shared his fate to this point - Lear’s death with his final line in the play:
Despite its undeniable greatness, throughout the last four centuries King Lear has left audiences, readers and critics alike emotionally exhausted and mentally unsatisfied by its conclusion. Shakespeare seems to have created a world too cruel and unmerciful to be true to life and too filled with horror and unrelieved suffering to be true to the art of tragedy. These divergent impressions arise from the fact that of all Shakespeare's works, King Lear expresses human existence in its most universal aspect and in its profoundest depths. A psychological analysis of the characters such as Bradley undertook cannot by itself resolve or place in proper perspective all the elements which contribute to these impressions because there is much here beyond the normal scope of psychology and the conscious or unconscious motivations in men.
In the beginning of the play the reader learns that Lear is ready to give up his kingdom and retire from a conversation that two noblemen, Gloucester and Kent, are having. He asks his three daughters; Cordelia, Goneril, and Regan to express their love for him to help him make his decision as to who would inherit his kingdom. Cordelia has always been his “favorite” daughter and when asked how much she loved her father she does not lie to him and tells him “I am sure my love’s more ponderous than my tongue” (1363). Rather than being grateful for such love and honesty, Lear banishes her to France and divides his kingdom to his two other daughters. Kent does not agree with Lear’s decision and Lear banishes him too.
actions he dies from heartbreak, and in his death Lear's soul has chosen to pass on for
In the final scene, Lear is shown carrying his dead daughter, Cordelia, in his arms, realizing all the pain and suffering he’s caused for the both of them due to his fatal mistakes throughout the play. Essentially, Lear dies of a broken heart. Watching the daughter he always loved the most, was too much for him too bare. As David Bromwich stated in his journal, “King Lear at the end, by contrast, knows what has happened to him. He knows, even though he is barely conscious and therefore cannot begin to produce the self-recognition we may be looking for.” As mentioned earlier, Lear was going through and identity crisis throughout the play, and even though he understands what has happened to him, he’s unable to recapture who he is given everything that has happened. This ending for Lear was very telling and as a result of his tragic mistakes throughout the play, his catastrophic death is a fitting end to the life of the once “King”
ii. 48-50). Death, violence, and loss are woven all throughout the language, and in doing so, the physicality of such matters dominate the metaphorical world of the play. Perhaps the most tragic event in the play, the death of Cordelia allows the fullest expression of the tragedy’s address to personal morality. Like the other two daughters, Cordelia is an extension of Lear. Thus her death is an aspect of his own, allowing Lear to experience death and speak to the wrongness of it all. “No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, and thou no breath at all? (Shakespeare V. ii. 306-308).” Both unnatural and inevitable, the unjust death of Cordelia embodies our sense that death is wrong and outrageous. Most of us are not kings, but it may be true that in each of us is a King Lear who is unwilling to give our kingdom, our sense of privilege, our rights we think we have earned. We expect to cling on to our existence, and pretend death does not exist. As we continue to explore the psychology behind death, we find, as we so often do, that Shakespeare has been there before
It is said that no other playwright illustrates the human condition like William Shakespeare. Furthermore, it is said that no other play illustrates the human condition like King Lear. The story of a bad king who becomes a good man is truly one of the deepest analyses of humanity in literary history; and it can be best seen through the evolution of Lear himself. In essence, King Lear goes through hell in order to compensate for his sins.