Choosing Words Carefully

During today’s class, we watched a scene from “King Lear” that showed how Lear asked each of his daughters to express their love. He first asked the oldest one, Goneril, and she smoothly said how she loved him more than anything in the world. The second daughter, Regan, hesitated in her words but eventually said that she loved her father the same way Goneril did, only more. Cordelia, the youngest and truest of them all refused to play around with flattery and said outright that she loved him no more and no less than any daughter would love her father. Her response angered Lear and he disowned her on the spot. This scene can be played out in multiple ways, and the way this movie presented it makes me sympathize with all of the characters, including the two older sisters.

When the king mentioned that he wanted to split the land amongst them, he asked to only hear them express their love for him in return. He wasn’t asking for much. Goneril was most graceful in her reply, and although she sugar-coated her words and made them seem extravagant, she did what was expected of her in the moment, especially since they were all surrounded by servants, rather than being one on one with each other.

Regan presented my personal least favorite response, as she paused between words and seemed to be talking to everyone, rather than her father. Her words seemed most fake and her presentation of the lie was quite a fail. Nevertheless, she was just as nervous about the question their father presented to them as the eldest sister, and she did her best to please her father.
Cordelia’s words were by far my favorite. She was confident and didn’t hesitate in the least as she told her father the plain and simple truth. It was rather harsh on her part as well, since they weren’t alone and she seemed closest to her father, in physical proximity as well as favoritism.
When the king had first entered the room, Cordelia was right behind him. And when he presented the question to her, he took her hands in his and it seemed like he already knew she loved him most of all, regardless of what her sisters said before her. And perhaps there was some truth when she said “nothing.” No words could ever describe the love a daughter feels for her father. It is one of those things that cannot be expressed through words to do it justice. The
fact that Goneril and Regan succeeded in expressing their love in words is almost a dead giveaway that what they said was false. Cordelia, in her certainty and erect stature, fought against using words to describe her love, and instead used words to put her sister’s responses down. Although she was trying to do the right thing, she hurt and embarrassed her father.

When the king yelled at Cordelia and she was running out of the room, she and Goneril shared a glance which made it seem as though there was some connection between the sisters and that her older sister sympathized with her sibling’s “poor decision” in the moment. Words, although true and straightforward, still should be processed in a way that will have the least painful impact on the listener, before their actual delivery. That is perhaps the only mistake that Cordelia made—and it was a big one.