Significant Issues in King Lear

[Kelsey22]

Any ideas on significant issues Shakespeare is asking the audience to wrestle with in King Lear?
I am suppossed to discuss his success in causing these issues to come into sharp focus.

What does Shakespeare achieve in juxtaposing the Lear and Gloucester families?

Why must Gloucester lose his eyes?

Why must Lear go "mad"?

Why must Cordelia die?

Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated thanks.

[Kelsey22]

It has been brought to my attention that my posts seem like I am wanting my homework done for me. I just want to let other users know that I am not wanting my homework done for me! I am a home schooled student and I am just trying to get a discussion going on some of the questions I am given to think about and analyzie after each play. I have my own opinion and would just like to hear someone elses opinion and hopefully be able to have a meaningful discussion that allows us all to think about what Shakespeare wanted his audience to learn. I am also looking to enrich my learning experience while studing Shakespeare. So if anyone would like to reply I will post again so we can start a discussion, as you will bounce ideas off eachother.

[Kelsey22]

Here is what i have been able to come up with:
Significant issues blindness and materialism (caring more about outward appearance than real meaning or true character)

He shows us the parrell between the two men. Their seeming blindness, their foolish decisions, the way their children betray them, as well as the way the rejected children come to their fathers' rescue when they are needed most.


I think Gloucester lost his eyes because it is very sybolic of his "blindness" when it came to his children and it also symbolizes lear's "blindness" in the same aspect, which I think is a part of the juxtaposing. I also think Gloucester lost his eyes because it helps to show the cruelty of Lear's daughter, who has betrayed not only her father but now Gloucester for helping her father. I think the lose of his eyes is also a symbol of the fact that even when he had his vision he wasn't seeing clearly. Gloucester saw more clearly as a blind man. He realized his foolishness and finally saw what he should have seen all along. Any other ideas about why Shakespeare has Gloucester's eyes gouged out?

I think Lear going mad is symbolic for he and Gloucester in a similar way to Gloucester loosing his eyes being symbolic for he and Lear. Lear's madness comes about because of his "blindness" about his daughters, especially Cordelia. Lear goes mad because he finally "sees" how foolish he was in turning Cordelia away. He comes to realize that his care about outward appearence of his daughters' love for him was foolish. He realizes how evil Goneril and Regan are and begins to go crazy because of the way they are treating him. He really looses it when he see clearly how much Cordelia loved him and how much better she would have treated him. I think it really hit him when he sees that Cordelia is more kind to him even after he disowned her and divided her dowary between Goneril and Regan.

I think Cordelia dying is Shakespeare showing his cynicism of justice in society. I think he's almost saying there is no justice in this world for people who try to do good. If he believed there was justice in this world I don't believe that he would have killed off Cordelia. Goneril and regan deserved to die or be punished for the treatment of their father. I think that is another thing Shakespeare wanted the audience to think about, why bad things always seem to happen to good people I also feel that Cordelia's death was another way for Lear to be punished for the way he treated her. any other ideas or suggestions?

[Kelsey22]

In my final copy I was planning on writing something about the signifigance of nature. I also have an understanding that in the Elizabethian period they believed that the natural world reflected a heirarchy that mirrored good gov't and a stable monarch. His era also reflected "natural" and "unnatural" behaviors: unnatural behaviors included mistreating family members, which could upset the natural order. The major message i get from the play is that people in Shakespeares time and maybe even himself believed there was NO GOD and that the comforts of religion are make- believe. I also think Shakespeare saw peopleas not being good by nature or by customs or laws. I get a very skeptical view of human nature from Lear, that the only hope we as human beings have is that we can try to be decent and generous to one another. I had to come up with the two most signifigant themes besides the themes represented in questions two through 5. I am thinking nature and misjudgement or nature and cruelty or even deception or greed. Any thoughts?

[echo123]

I think Gloucester losing his eyes showed the irony that in his blindness he could see the truth.And it is the price he must pay for his hamartia___ misjudgment. Kear Lear is a domestic tragedy and I think it is also a tragedy of human defects. Lear's stupidity, Gloucester's credulity...
and Cordelia's death is the real tragedy of the play. A Chinese writer once said "tragedy is to destroy the most beautiful things" though she is beautiful, loving, true to herself, yet, in a tragic society, she cannot survive

[byquist]

Of three daughters, why are 2 really bad, and 1 really good?

[grace86]

Think about the role the Fool played. He disappeared all of a sudden; why is this? Is it because Lear was finally really a fool...he went mad, and that the fool was really a sane man? Or is this because he met Edgar who was acting crazy?? Interesting thought.

There is a lot of the gods involved...notice how often there are prayers. I think Gloucester is the one who said something along the lines "we are flies to wanton boys..."to do with as they wish, then later on, he is thanking the gods that he is alive and saying he will only die when the gods permit. There is a lot of prayer in this play. The role of the gods is an odd one...are they around to watch us squirm?

I have a final on this tomorrow afternoon, kind of cool this came up on the forum.

[zomgmouse]

The fool can be seen as Lear's conscience, and when Lear finally realises the truth he has no more need of the fool.

[Gladys]

The fool can be seen as Lear's conscience, and when Lear finally realises the truth he has no more need of the fool.

Alternatively, Zomgmouse, the disappearance of the Fool, the quintessence of truth, is bound up with truthful Cordelia.

The Fool only crystallises once his idol, Cordelia, has left for France. What need two truth-sayers? When Cordelia is finally reunited Lear, the fool has merged again with his goddess and is duly hanged.

And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,

[kelby_lake]

I'd say blindness is the key thing- sight symbolising the realisation of things as they really are.