After finishing King Lear, I’m sort of sad that so many of the characters were killed. Not only were the “bad guys” killed off, but others like Gloucester, Cordelia, and Lear. Not only were they killed, but both Gloucester and Lear died in moments that could have potentially been a happy time for them. Gloucester dies when Edgar reveals himself, and Lear dies when he thinks Cordelia might be beginning to breathe again. Despite being depressing, I thought that these events added to our discussion on the play supporting nihilism. Perhaps as readers we are supposed to look at the deaths of these characters and use it to propel a questioning of our own lives, and observe them to see if there actually is any meaning to them.
Something else I still find to be interesting after finishing the play is Lear’s regression or descent from King to an almost non-human being. I liked that when Lear gave his daughters his kingdom to rule, that he was basically removing himself from the position of king, and thus, a position of authority. I think we talked in class about how Lear was able to regain power over himself/his life through this regression to a more animalistic way of living. He removes the clothes which helped create his identity of a king, and formulates his own natural identity based on his connection to nature. The idea of natural also relates to Edmund, who is “natural” born, or illegitimate. Because of this Edmund is unable to get the position of power that he longs for, and has to resort to other, more shady ways of getting it.
2 comments:
I agree with what you said about Lear giving his power to his daughters. Despite the fact that everything out of his daughters' mouths were lies, except Cordelia's, the idea that Lear wanted to hand over the power and live out the rest of his days without worry being cared for by his daughters was kind of nice. Too bad his daughters are awfull and didn't even bother pretending after they were given the kingdom.
Am I the only one that thought "Lear's a hippie!" when he appears later with the flowers and challenges authority? I wonder if anyone in Shakespeare's time took any of that to heart and questioned his representation of authority, or lack of it. It's not like the monarch hasn't rebuked him for negatively portraying a king before. He may have had the plan of supporting that "natural order" of the law and how royal power should be passed.
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