What Are Blindness In King Lear

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Whereas King Lear, doesn’t give any land to Cordelia, the daughter he loved the most, because she didn’t express her love from him as much as his other daughters did. King Lear and Gloucester are blind when it comes to their children. King Lear was blind when it came to who truly loves him, and therefore his other daughters treats him poorly. Gloucester is blind to not see the deviousness in Edmund and the different schemes he comes up with behind his back. Because they cannot receive the love and respect they deserve from their children their hearts are ‘cracking’, not only from old age but because of their displeasure at the treatment from their children. Despite King Lear’s blindness towards his daughters he finally realizes their true self …show more content…

Unlike in King Lear, where Lear was physically able to see the whole time, but was blinded by his daughter’s schemes, only to find out that he shouldn’t have paid so much attention to them. While Gloucester is physically blind towards the end of the play, this is where the readers may notice him losing his mind, but still gaining insight and coming to make sense of all that is going on with his sons. Similarly, the physically blindness helps Tiresias and Gloucester because they both now ‘see clearly’ of what is happening and what is going to …show more content…

While in The Odyssey, Tiresias is already physically blind when Odysseus comes to see him to tell his fortune, but Odysseus physically blinds the Cyclops, Polyphemus so he may get out of his situation. With all the elements of blindness in King Lear and The Odyssey, blindness hinders one’s perception of another person. Due to the blindness Lear and Gloucester has, they are unable to see their children for what they truly are as a person. Though Tiresias, cannot see Odysseus, he has a perception of who he is and what his troubles are from his fortunes he is seeing. Polyphemus’s blindness is hinder due to the fact that he did not know that Odysseus was tricking him in believing that his name was ‘Nobody’. But the turn of events happens when Lear and Gloucester realizes that they were blind to their children, and when Polyphemus was blind not to see that Odysseus was scheming him. Sight plays an important role in seeing who and what others are, but also how they can affect oneself and the actions he

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