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study questions

1. What does the storm in act 3 symbolize? the storm powerfully symbolizes the chaos in lear rsquo s mind: the violent tumult in the natural world reflects lear rsquo s inner turmoil.

But the storm also provides an example of the power of nature, from which not even a king is safe. Even as he challenges the storm, lear recognizes his own mortality and human frailty mdash perhaps for the first time. The storm may also be a reference to the idea of divine justice, since tempests and thunder have been viewed in both christian and pagan traditions as a demonstration of divine anger or power. Thus, the storm seems both to point out the weakness of lear rsquo s royal power in the face of nature rsquo s supremacy and to imply that the gods are angry at the state of human affairs. Such anger is likely directed not only at lear rsquo s enemies for their ruthless and cruel ambition but also at lear for his initial callous treatment of cordelia. The female characters in king lear are powerful figures who are often as aggressive as, and at times more ruthless than, their male counterparts.

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Cordelia, who is pure, unselfish, and unflinchingly loyal, is a more standard shakespearean woman than her strong, assertive, conspiratorial, violent, and regal sisters, goneril and regan. While the older sisters are clearly very different in personality from the youngest, and while goneril and regan are clearly villains, all three daughters resemble their father. In goneril and regan, the similarity rests in their pride, arrogance, and fierce temper in cordelia, it rests in her aura of royal dignity, courage, and uncompromising stubbornness. All three sisters help to propel the plot, and goneril and regan are even effective killers regan, most unusual for a shakespearean woman, kills with a sword. The presence of these three women becomes even more interesting when we remember that, as often happens in shakespeare, there are no mothers present in the play lear rsquo s and gloucester rsquo s dead wives are mentioned neither by these men nor by their children. Without guidance from other females, the sisters actively pursue their desires as they themselves see fit.

The two elderly characters who suffer the most in the play are lear and gloucester. Their stories are similar in many ways however, while lear slowly goes mad, gloucester is blinded but remains sane. Shakespeare implies a parallel between the two conditions: lear and gloucester both seem to be able to perceive certain things more clearly after they lose their faculties.

Lear realizes only as he begins to go mad that cordelia loves him and that goneril and regan are treacherous flatterers. He comes to understand the weakness of human nature, the emptiness of royal claims to power, and the similarity of all human beings as he rambles in his insanity. Similarly, gloucester comes to understand which son is really good and which is bad at the very moment of his blinding. It is interesting to note that lear rsquo s eyesight fails in the moments just before he dies, while gloucester wishes himself insane, thinking he might thus bear his misery more easily. This grim irony suggests a hopelessness that contributes to the general gloom surrounding the play rsquo s end.

Is lear a sympathetic character? what about gloucester? how do our impressions of them change during the course of the play? 2. Discuss the relationship between cordelia and lear, and compare it to the relationship between edgar and gloucester. Of the three villains mdash edmund, goneril, and regan mdash who is the most interesting? why? 5.

How does order break down in britain during the course of the play? who is to blame? 7. Are we meant to find him sympathetic? posted by admin as essays viewed from a psychoanalytical perspective, king lear is a shakespearian tragedy involving madness, in more than one sense, and the causes and effects of this. There are many individual concepts to explore, and this exposition will investigate the following: the madness in lear and how it progresses, absence of the mother, and the sexual relationship between lear and his daughters. Lear lacks responsibility in terms of actively and willingly approaching his situations and confrontations blindly. This and his lack of self awareness and lack of awareness toward others, prove that the king is not a man more sinned against than sinning. It seems quite clear that shakespeare uses the word mad for at least the first part of the play in the sense of extremely angry, and only later, when lear does lose touch with reality, does it then mean not in his right mind insane. Lear is moving on a continuum that begins with extreme anger and progresses to a hallucinatory world.

It is here lear begins to recognise his wrongdoings, and why he is not a man more sinned against than sinning. Lears madness is often seen simply as a man losing his head, but a closer psychoanalytical reading suggests that lears madness is much more sharply focused in cause and effect, a particular manifestation of psychological breakdown carefully developed by shakespeare. The following statements justify lears madness, and although tragic, his mental state is a contributing factor in the kings rash decisions and how he is not a man more sinned against than sinning. He is actually playing the fool, with the fool, and continuing the fools jesting.

Willing to expect loss of temper, the selfish king is not a man more sinned against than sinning. It is edgar who first introduces the idea of genuinely mad people the country gives me proof and precedent of bedlam beggars, who with roaring voices strike 2.3.14 15 bedlam means lunatic asylum the disguise that edgar adopts of a lunatic is materially different from the madness that lear will descend into. As is clear from the lack of coherent deductive content in edgarтs feigned speech, he is taking on the disguise of someone who, in contemporary times, has an inherent severe mental disorder. Lear himself then makes this distinction, talking about cornwall we are not ourselves/when nature, being oppressd, commands the mind/to suffer with the body. 2.4.100 103 the point is that physical or emotional suffering comes before the madness and is a cause of it.

In a way lear is allowing this destruction, and this weakness in his character suggest a man who is not more sinned against than sinning. It is regan, talking to lear, who actually makes the connection between extreme anger and the loss of reason that can result nature in you stands on the very verge of his confine 2.4.139 140. Evidence supporting gonerils dislike of her father of other your new pranks 1.4.193 gonerils terminology reflects her attitude toward her father, and how she feels he misbehaves childishly. In the same scene lear still fears uncontrollable anger i prithee, daughter, do not make me mad 2.4.211 this concept of extreme emotion, rather than biological loss of reason is reinforced by two other characters. 2.4.288 and kent combines cause and effect in his comment to the gentleman how unnatural and bemaddening sorrow/the king has cause to plain 3.1. The kings madness at this point suggest he is not a man more sinned against than sinning. Later in the play, albany will recognise the connection between mad as extreme anger, and mad loss of reason as the consequence of that extremity, when he accuses goneril of making lear mad 5.2.

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Mad has been used in conjunction with make me mad, make me really angry, as in our modern sense an outside person or factor causing the extreme anger. And just as we would use this to express a fear that we are losing our reason, so surely lear at this moment is using the word not in the sense of extreme anger, but in the sense of the loss of sanity. This is very different language to describe his state of mind, and for confirmation, this is exactly the point where the storm, symbol of transformation and of raw nature as opposed to the more rational, human created environment of the castle/court he has just left starts to work on him. His inability to overcome this state of mind proves lear is a man not more sinned against than sinning.

Indeed, lear equates the storm with his state of mind the tempest in my mind/doth from my senses take all feeling else/save from what beats there. That the transformation is not complete, but a gradual one, is indicated by lears own recognition of the dangers of extreme anger unhinging reason o, that way madness lies let me shun that! 3.4.21. The real sign that lears outwardly directed emotions are turning inward into a state of mind that loses connection with external reality is his single mindedness in talking about the wickedness of his daughters, when with edgar and the fool in 3.4. He has lost connection with those he is talking to, this being evidence for the statement he is not a man more sinned against than sinning.

This situation is made all the more disturbing by the presence of edgar feigning a different kind of madness. Kent now recognises that the situation has changed, in language that makes this change quite clear his wits begin тunsettle 3,4,146 , and then tells us of that continuum from extreme anger to loss of the sense of reality all the power of his wits have given way to his impatience. A pattern of ageing is evident in king lear, he is moving from the first half of his life into the second half of his life. This movement is characterised by jung as a reversal of everything held consciously true in the first half of life. Lear begins this journey as a contrasting example of jungs extroverted, thinking type, and so must become the opposite introverted, intuitive type.