King Lear by William Shakespeare and A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley are both fantastic tragedies that follow a similar story arc. Although King Lear was written in 1606, and A Thousand Acres was written in 1999, they contain the same essential elements of a tragedy. Jane Smiley modeled her novel after King Lear, focusing less on Lear’s story, and more on the daughters’ stories. Both story-lines are extremely similar: a father chooses to divide his land amongst his daughters, and everything following that becomes a disaster. King Lear and A Thousand Acres utilize the elements of unexpected suffering, suffering that extends beyond the protagonist, and society/status to mold their stories into classic tragedies.
A Thousand Acres and King Lear
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Lear seems content with passing down his land, “shake all cares and business from our age,/ and put them on younger strengths” (I.I.41-42), as long as he still maintains his kingly respect. In each story the jovial atmosphere is interrupted when the father decides to divvy up his property. In A Thousand Acres this appears as a bump in the road, because life goes on with an increasing sense of tension. When Larry is present the family feels like “magnets with our northern poles pointing towards the center of the circle” (Smiley 101), which causes tension between Larry and the family. The main shift in Ginny, her relationship with her husband, occurs after the division of the farm.Ty always held the spot as the perfect man for her, but once Jess arrives she develops feelings for him, and cheats on her husband. Her moral compass becomes damaged, causing bad decisions in the future. However, in King Lear the division of his kingdom causes his existence to descend into chaos. Suddenly he is without property, a daughter, and a home. The daughters he is left with want nothing to do with him, they treat him with “sharp-toothed unkindness” (Shakespeare …show more content…
Ginny and Lear take the brunt of the hit, but their actions affect the people around them, causing their demise as well. Ginny’s decision to drive Larry away into the storm leads to the fall of Ty and Rose. Ty’s only dream is to run a hog operation, but his dreams slip away from him when Ginny creates a permanent discord in the family. With Larry no longer backing him, he loses confidence in himself, and focuses his energy on trying to repair the family. Slowly but surely, his dream fades away as he loses his wife, hog operation, and farm. His pain is evident as he recollects what has occurred since Ginny left, but when he brings up divorce, and Ginny appears unaffected, Ty reveals a “wounded surprise...that revealed something under his cool surface” (Smiley 341). Rose had the most tragic ending, because she spent her final years without her best friend, her sister. They were a team, always there for each other, even in the worst of times. But when Ginny left, everything changed, Rose was left to make crucial decisions that she was not qualified to make. This could only be detrimental to her fragile health, and the extra strain lead to her becoming weaker. If Ginny had been there to support Rose, Ty would not have lost the farm, and Rose would not have lost her health. Throughout King Lear the web of suffering expands, and all the strings lead back
Lear becomes blinded by his flaws, leading him to make irrational decisions which ultimately cause him to go mad. After Cordelia is unable to state how much she loves her father and outdo her sisters exaggerated professions of
As the play progressed, Lear slowly came to clear vision. he realized that that his two eldest daughter did not truly love him after they locked him out of the castle during a tremendous storm. He also finally saw through that Cordelia’s love for him was so tremendous that she was not able to put it in words. Unfortunately, his blindness caused the dearth of Cordelia and his own.
... Lears blessing, and declared his daughter. Lear also realized that Kents speaking out was for Lear’s best and that he too was abused and banished. What stings Lear even more is that he is now completely dependent upon his two shameless daughters, Goneril and Regan. Plus that he must now beg them when he took care of them like a father when they were once children, to drive Lears further into madness he realizes that as king he was so ignorant and blind with power that he never took care of the homeless and let them suffer. All these realization and the fact that Lear is in his second childhood a tender stage drive him into the peak of madness.
One of the main signals of the growing chaos of Lear's world is the distortion of familial and social ties. King Lear exiles his favorite daughter, Cordelia, for a trifling offense, and those daughters he does favor soon turn against him.
Communication is the key essential for one to fully understand and personify the thought of another. Without the key essentials themselves, a knowledge for wisdom and understanding would be lost, thus, causing a breakdown towards communication and emotional intelligence. Within the theatrical play, King Lear written by William Shakespeare himself, comes the story of the falling of an old English Elizabethan king, Lear, whose patriarch role was taken away; due to the act of his own pride. Other than the play’s main plot, King Lear too portrays the telling between the lost of communication and the consequences of its breakdown between people, parents and children. The lack of communication and understanding is shown throughout the entire play,
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of King Lear. Ed. Louis B. Wright and Virginia L. Freund. New York: Washington Square, 1957. Print.
The first flaw in King Lear is his arrogance, which results in the loss of Cordelia and Kent. It is his arrogance in the first scene of the play that causes him to make bad decisions. He expects his favorite, youngest daughter to be the most worthy of his love. His pride makes him expect that Cordelia’s speech to be the one filled with the most love. Unfortunately for King Lear’s pride, Cordelia replies to his inquisition by saying, “I love your majesty/According to my bond and nothing less';(1.1.100-101). Out of pride and anger, Lear banishes Cordelia and splits the kingdom in half to the two evil sisters, Goneril and Regan. This tragic flaw prevents King Lear from seeing the truth because his arrogance overrides his judgement. Lear’s arrogance also causes him to lose his most faithful servan...
When Jane Smiley wrote A Thousand Acres, she consciously made the story parallel to Shakespeare's King Lear for several reasons. The novel's characters and basic storyline are almost direct parallels to King Lear, but Smiley's dissatisfaction with the traditional interpretation of King Lear is showcased in her modern day version (Berne 236).
The tragedy King Lear by William Shakespeare ought to be seen as a lesson on what not to do as a parent. By picking favorites, King Lear and the Earl of Gloucester leave a lasting impact on their children 's psyche, ultimately leading to them committing horrible crimes. The rash judgments, violent reactions, and blindness of both Lear and Gloucester lead to both their and their children 's demise. As a result, all of the father-child relationships in the play begin to collapse.
Power is a person’s capacity to influence and control. In Shakespeare’s time and in the modern world, power is something that is sought by many people. When used for good, power can inspire change, help society and unify a nation. However, in William Shakespeare’s play King Lear, it is a force strong enough to turn family against each other, and drive people mad. Goneril and Regan are corrupted by the power their father gives them. Edmund is corrupted by the power of his new position, Earl, and King Lear is blinded by his belief that he is the all-powerful King. The greed for power, plays an extensive role in the play because it corrupts most of the villainous characters and ultimately leads them to their demise.
In Shakespeare's “King Lear”, the tragic hero is brought down, like all tragic heroes, by one fatal flaw; in this case it is pride, as well as foolishness. It is the King's arrogant demand for absolute love and, what's more, protestations of such from the daughter who truly loves him the most, that sets the stage for his downfall. Cordelia, can be seen as Lear’s one true love, and her love and loyalty go not only beyond that of her sisters but beyond words, thus enraging the proud King Lear whose response is: "Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her". Here, Lear's pride is emphasized as he indulges in the common trend of despising in others what one is most embarrassed of oneself.
What comes first, family or power? The general population would lean heavily towards family because love for one’s family proves to be one of the strongest bonds between humans. This holds true in most entertainment mediums as well. However, in Shakespeare’s King Lear, Lear’s daughters prize their father’s kingdom and power over their relationship to him. This selfish attitude defines the conflict through the entirety of the play. Shakespeare expresses two major themes in King Lear; love and wisdom. King Lear’s struggle to recognize authentic love, love himself, and acknowledge wisdom imparted on him, due to his weak emotional state, results in needless conflicts and the deaths of many.
"As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; / they kill us for their
The human condition can ultimately be defined as the positive and negative traits and characteristics that frame the complexity of human nature. This concept has been widely incorporated into many pieces of English literature throughout time, especially in William Shakespeare’s Jacobean tragedy, King Lear (hereafter Lear). More specifically, Shakespeare’s portrayal of the human condition in Lear depicts the suppression of one’s morality and/or rationality, triggering one’s downfall, as being due to unrestrained pride, gullibility and strong ambitions. Moreover, through studying the extract from the love scene/ Edmund’s soliloquy, I have gained a deepened understanding of Shakespeare’s representation of the human condition.
No tragedy of Shakespeare moves us more deeply that we can hardly look upon the bitter ending than King Lear. Though, in reality, Lear is far from like us. He himself is not an everyday man but a powerful king. Could it be that recognize in Lear the matter of dying? Each of us is, in some sense, a king who must eventually give up his kingdom. To illustrate the process of dying, Shakespeare has given Lear a picture of old age in great detail. Lear’s habit to slip out of a conversation (Shakespeare I. v. 19-33), his brash banishment of his most beloved and honest daughter, and his bitter resentment towards his own loss of function and control, highlighted as he ironically curses Goneril specifically on her functions of youth and prays that her