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King Lear Essays

Shakespeare’s King Lear examines the politics of betrayal and the awful costs paid by its victims. Nowhere in the play are these costs more apparent than in those scenes in which Lear and his exiled companions find themselves caught in the midst of a thunderstorm unsheltered. As King, Lear...

1 372 words

Introduction Thesis Statement The influences of feminine powers from the Shakespearean plays, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, portrayed during the opening scenes have affected the courses of male instincts and literary arguments throughout the play. In this study, the emphasis is given to the...

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King Lear: motifs Shakespeare uses many motifs to expand on the themes of the story. His most-used motif revolves around filial responsibility. Each of the two plots contains characters who betray their fathers. Goneril and Regan flatter their father, King Lear, and then betray him. The drastic...

King Lear: Conspiracy in Nakedness and Dress Nakedness and dress in Shakespeare's King Lear, represented the status of a character. Many scenes use clothing to show one characters dominance over another. The more opulent the clothing, the higher the status, or the lack of clothing, the lower the...

The Deception in King Lear William Shakespeare's play King Lear is a play full of deceit, betrayal and meaningless promises. This becomes evident in the first few lines. We first learn of the empty words of Goneril and Regan as well as their hatred for their father, King Lear. This becomes the...

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King Lear Themes Many themes are evident in King Lear, but perhaps one of the most prevalent relates to the theme of justice. Shakespeare has developed a tragedy that allows us to see man's decent into chaos. Although Lear is perceived as [trx_quote title="William Shakespeare, King Lear Themes...

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King Lear: Lear The Tragic Hero The definition of tragedy in the Oxford dictionary is, "drama of elevated theme and diction and with unhappy ending; sad event, serious accident, calamity. " However, the application of this terminology in Shakespearean Tragedy is more expressive. Tragedy does not...

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King Lear: Consequences of One Man's Decisions Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear is a detailed description of the consequences of one man's decisions. This fictitious man is Lear, King of England, who's decisions greatly alter his life and the lives of those around him. As Lear bears the status of...

King Lear: Sense of Renewal Throughout Shakespeare's King Lear, there is a sense of renewal, or as L. C. Knights puts it, "affirmation in spite of everything," in the play. These affirmative actions are vividly seen throughout the play that is highly infused with evil, immorality and perverted...

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King Lear: Suffering Suffering takes on many appearances, depending on how it is received. In King Lear, suffering was very painful to two people, and the giver wasn't necessarily an enemy, pain can be from the ones you love. A storm isn't something you wouldn't think of when pain comes to mind...

Re-educating A King: King Lear's Self-Awareness Halfway down Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head: The fisherman that walk along the beach Appear like mice. Although this quote from Shakespeare's King Lear is made by Poor Tom to his unknowing...

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A device which Shakespeare often utilized to convey the confusion and chaos within the plot of his plays, is the reflection of that confusion and chaos in the natural environment of the setting, along with supernatural anomalies and animal imageries. In King Lear, these devices are used to...

ANALYZING KING LEAR’S TRAGIC FLAWS King Lear is a play about a tragic hero, by the name of King Lear, whose flaws get the best of him. A tragic hero must possess three qualities. The first is they must have power, in other words, a leader. King Lear has the highest rank of any leader. He is...

Shakespeare's King Lear is a story of treachery and deceit. The villainy of the play knows no bounds. Family lines are ignored in an overwhelming quest for power. This villainy is epitomized in the character of Edmund, bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester. Terms to describe Edmund might include...

?How central is the idea of a ? fatal flaw' in King Lear? ' More than any of Shakespeare's plays, King Lear explores the concept of a fatal flaw and the terrible downfall it could lead to. It is indeed the most central idea in the play. Shakespeare shows us how one flaw in an otherwise normal...

Power is the ability to manipulate and control whatever one desires; to do what one pleases to do without answering to authority. The power that corrupts the characters plays an extensive role throughout Shakespeare's play, King Lear. Goneril and Regan are corrupted by the power that Lear offers...

King Lear—A Man More Sinned Against Than Sinning? A King is supposed to have all that he needs without having to worry about anything in his late years. Yet King Lear, in Act 3, Scene 2, cried out in pitifully: “I am a man / More sinned against than sinning. ” Although Lear has...

1 363 words

In Act 1, Scene 1 Kent says, "See better, Lear. " How does Lear ? see' more clearly by Act V Scene 3, and what has led him to this? King Lear of Britain, the ageing protagonist in Shakespeare's tragic play undergoes radical change as a man, father and king as the plot progresses when forced to...

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The play of "King Lear" is about a person in search of their own personal identity. In the historical period in which this play is set, the social structure was set in order of things closest to Heaven. Therefore, on Earth, the king was at the top, followed by his noblemen and going all the way...

Shakespeare's King Lear is a play which shows the consequences of one man's decisions. The audience follows the main character, Lear, as he makes decisions that disrupt order in his Kingdom. When Lear surrenders all his power and land to his daughters as a reward for their demonstration of love...

Q: How does Shakespeare uses Imagery to show the development of theme and characters in King Lear and Hamlet? Ans: Shakespeare who was popular for his tragedies created two masterpieces which were quite different in plots but carried almost the same themes. They were two popular plays which...

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William Shakespeare is probably the greatest dramatist of England. I think everyone has read one of his great plays or at least has seen one of the movies which are based on Shakespeare's work. In this essay I will compare two of his tragedies 'Hamlet, Prince of Denmark' and 'Tragedy of King Lear'...

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In many of the plays by William Shakespeare, the central character goes through internal and external changes that ultimately shake their foundations to the core. Numerous theories have been put forth to explain the sequence of tragedies Shakespeare wrote during this period by linking it to some...

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KING LEAR – William Shakespeare 2010 (i) “In King Lear honour and loyalty triumph over brutality and viciousness. ” Write your response to this statement suppor! ng your answer with suitable reference to the text. OR (ii) “In King Lear the villainous characters hold more fascina? on for the...

King Lear By: Bryce Romeo King Lear: Loyalty and Betrayal In William Shakespeare’s play, “King Lear”, the reader will see many juxtapositions throughout the scenes. One of these juxtapositions, is loyalty and betrayal. We will be taking a closer look at examples throughout the play. Goneril’s...

Raphaelle Broughton Assess the importance of loyalty in King Lear Shakespeare manipulates loyalty in the play, as the complete and utter devotion of some characters, for example Gloucester and Kent, emphasise just how terrible it is that Gonerill, Regan and Edmund turned so harshly against those...

English IV January 31, 2012 "Love, and be silent" As one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies, the story of King Lear reflects the two extremes of human nature--love and loyalty, lies and betrayal. In such a complex world, Shakespeare ironically contrasts the physical qualities to the deeper...

Phillips 1 Sarah Phillips Ms. Moriconi AP English Language and Composition June 10, 2014 The Parallel Journeys of Families The infamous playwright, William Shakespeare’s, King Lear relays the story of a tragic hero and his family while paralleling it to the sub-plot within the tragedy. The story...

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King Lear tells of an old, senile ruler who, having given up his title, divides his land between his two villainous daughters, and his third daughter is exiled. Parallel to Lears situation is the sub-plot of Gloucester, whose bastard son betrays him and his legitimate son Edgar. Shakespeare...

100+ King Lear Essay Topics

Table of Contents

What is a King Lear Essay?

A King Lear essay is an academic paper focusing on William Shakespeare’s tragedy “King Lear”. The play is rich with themes of power, love, betrayal, and madness. Because of its depth and numerous subplots, it offers a wealth of topics for deep analysis and exploration. Whether you’re discussing character development, the play’s historical context, or its many symbols, a King Lear essay allows for a broad spectrum of discussion and analysis.

Choosing the Perfect King Lear Essay Topic: A Quick Guide

Selecting a topic for your King Lear essay requires a deep understanding of the play’s themes and characters. Here’s a brief guide to help you:

• Read the Play Thoroughly: Understand the story, its characters, and underlying themes.
• Identify Your Interest: Choose a theme or character that resonates with you.
• Research: Look for academic papers and discussions around that theme or character to get different perspectives.
• Be Specific: Narrow down your topic to ensure you can cover it in depth.
• Seek Feedback: Discuss your topic idea with peers or professors to refine it further.

King Lear Essay Topics Lists

Character analysis.

• The transformation of King Lear: From pride to madness.
• Cordelia’s role: Innocence and morality amidst deceit.
• The Machiavellian nature of Edmund.
• The tragic fall of Gloucester and its parallels with Lear.

Themes and Motifs

• The consequences of betrayal in King Lear.
• The role of nature and storm in representing Lear’s internal turmoil.
• Blindness vs. insight: A study of perception in King Lear.
• The juxtaposition of wisdom and foolishness throughout the play.
• The significance of the Fool and his role in the narrative.
• Clothes and their portrayal of identity and deception.

Historical and Cultural Context

• King Lear in the context of Elizabethan societal values.
• Comparing King Lear to other Shakespearean tragedies.

Literary Devices

• Use of irony in King Lear.
• The role of dramatic monologues in developing character depth.

Comparative Studies

• King Lear and Oedipus Rex: A comparative tragedy study.
• King Lear in modern adaptations: A study of film and theater renditions.

Character Exploration

• The multi-faceted nature of King Lear’s madness.
• The motives and morality of Edmund, the illegitimate son.
• Goneril and Regan’s descent into cruelty and deceit.
• Cordelia: The epitome of virtue in a world gone mad.
• Kent’s unwavering loyalty: A character study.
• The Fool: Wisdom in simplicity and jest.

Thematic Analyses

• Familial love versus political ambition.
• The frailty of human nature in the face of deceit.
• Madness as a reflection of societal disorder.
• Nature’s fury as a mirror to human emotion in King Lear.
• The consequences of blind trust.
• Age and youth: Conflicts and misunderstandings in King Lear.

Symbolism and Imagery

• The storm: Chaos within and without.
• Eyesight and insight: The tragedy of literal and metaphorical blindness.
• The role of animals in depicting human depravity.
• The significance of the crown and the loss of royal dignity.

Gender and Society

• Femininity and power: A look at the roles of Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia.
• Gender roles and expectations in Elizabethan society versus King Lear.
• The portrayal of women as villains and victims.
• The interplay between masculinity, power, and vulnerability.

Historical Context

• The political underpinnings of King Lear in Shakespeare’s time.
• The significance of the play’s setting between Paganism and Christianity.
• Comparing the two versions of King Lear: Quarto vs. Folio.
• The role of monarchy and succession debates in King Lear’s narrative.

Comparative Analyses

• King Lear and Macbeth: A study in tragic flaws.
• The tragic heroes: Oedipus vs. King Lear.
• Power dynamics: Comparing King Lear with Game of Thrones.
• Parent-child relationships in King Lear and Hamlet.

Literary Devices and Techniques

• Dramatic irony in the downfall of King Lear.
• Use of soliloquies in understanding characters’ psychologies.
• The role of subplots in enriching the main narrative.
• The interplay of prose and verse in King Lear.

Modern Interpretations and Adaptations

• Analyzing Akira Kurosawa’s “Ran” as an adaptation of King Lear.
• King Lear in the digital age: Modern retellings and interpretations.
• Setting King Lear in a corporate world: A thematic exploration.
• How contemporary theater stages King Lear.

Philosophy and Morality

• Existential themes in King Lear.
• The play’s exploration of justice and divine retribution.
• Nihilism and despair in King Lear’s darkest moments.
• Ethics of power and leadership as depicted in the play.

Staging and Performance

• The challenges and nuances of staging King Lear’s storm scene.
• Role of costumes and set design in bringing out the play’s themes.
• Evolution of King Lear’s character portrayal in theater over the centuries.
• The role of music and sound in enhancing King Lear’s tragic atmosphere.

Miscellaneous Topics

• The psychology of betrayal in King Lear.
• The cultural impact of King Lear in literature and art.
• Analyzing King Lear’s themes in the context of family therapy.
• The archetype of the tragic hero through King Lear.
• The exploration of mortality and legacy in King Lear.
• Nature, nurture, and the environment in the world of King Lear.

Role of Secondary Characters

• The significance of Edgar’s transformation into “Poor Tom”.
• Oswald’s loyalty: A contrasting perspective.
• Albany and Cornwall: A study in contrasting leadership styles.
• How secondary characters elevate the play’s primary themes.

Narrative Techniques

• The use of letters and written communication in forwarding the plot.
• King Lear as a play within a play: Performance and perception.
• The significance of off-stage events and their impact on the narrative.

Psychological Perspectives

• King Lear: A case study in cognitive decline and dementia.
• Sibling rivalry and Freudian interpretations in King Lear.
• The psychological toll of power and authority.

Religious Undertones

• Divine justice vs. earthly justice in King Lear.
• Pagan beliefs and Christian morality: A dichotomy in King Lear.
• The concept of redemption and sacrifice in the play.

Societal Critiques

• King Lear as a critique of feudalism.
• The role of class and hierarchy in the tragic events of the play.
• Shakespeare’s view on authority and governance through King Lear.

Artistic Interpretations

• The visual imagery of King Lear and its impact on audiences.
• The role of silence in King Lear: What’s left unsaid.
• Representations of King Lear in art, music, and other forms of media.

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Major Themes in the Play “King Lear” by William Shakespeare Essay

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Appearance versus reality

Irresponsibility, authority and order, works cited.

The theme of madness is the most powerful aspect of this tragedy. King Lear is portrayed as being insane throughout the play and his condition deteriorates towards the end (Archer, Turley, and Thomas 521). Two of his daughters recognize their father’s mental state and perhaps take advantage of the insanity to acquire power at the expense of their younger sister (Edmiston and McKibben 97). However, the two daughters attribute their father’s mental challenge to his old age. The insanity influences most of the King’s decisions as he banishes his loyal daughter and divides power between the two disloyal children (Woodford 77). The decision to disown and curse his daughter, viz. Cordelia, is uninformed, as it cannot be expected from a mentality sound individual.

Some scholars argue that both Kent and Cordelia are aware of the King’s condition right from the beginning, which explains why they remain loyal to him even as he mistreats them (Archer, Turley, and Thomas 523). The madness is connected to the trouble that befalls the King later in his helpless state as he faces all sorts of mistreatments from the two daughters whom he gives the mandate to run the kingdom. Due to his insanity, he fails to make an informed decision regarding giving away power to the self-centered daughters.

This theme stands out throughout the play as everything works against the readers’ expectations (Edmiston and McKibben 96). In the opening scenes of the play, King Lear relies on his older daughters’ faked sycophancy, and thus he rewards them with his kingdom. In addition, against the audience’s expectations, he sends away Cordelia, who is the only loyal daughter. In addition, he banishes Kent, who is one of his closest confidantes, on grounds of disloyalty. However, his two older daughters, whom he entrusts with his kingdom, are disloyal to him (Moore 181). The two daughters, whom he entrusts the kingdom, later betray him by mistreating and neglecting him in his old age.

Edmond conspires to discredit Edgar, his brother in-law, to his father (Ioppolo 139). Based on the conspiracy, his father sends Edgar away and shifts his trust on Edmond. However, Edmond is a traitor and he is only driven by jealousy to have his brother evicted so that he can gain power in the kingdom (Archer, Turley, and Thomas 529). As opposed to the expectations of his father, Edmond later causes trouble in the kingdom. The loyal characters in the play are expected to hold the best positions in the kingdom; however, they are portrayed as the poorest, while the disloyal persons hold powerful positions. Therefore, disloyalty wins over loyalty in this kingdom.

The theme of blindness stand out clearly in King Lear in relation to the physical blindness of Gloucester, who has his eye plucked off by Cornwall and Regan due to being loyal to the King (Urkowitz 136). The physical blindness is symbolic of mental blindness in decisions made by the main characters in the play. Such blindness is especially evidenced by the shortsighted decisions made by both King Lear and Gloucester in the play. The two are blind while selecting their favorite children to reward. For example, the King expels the honest child from his palace and gives leadership to the two irresponsible daughters (Edmiston and McKibben 92).

Blindness is also evidenced by the neglect concerning one’s responsibilities. For example, Gloucester is a philanderer and his behavior leads to the birth of an illegitimate child, viz. Edmund (Woodford 167). Edmund later becomes a threat to the kingdom to the extent of attempting to attain illegitimately. On his part, King Lear is blind in addressing the needs of the people that he serves as the King. He ignores the needs of the less fortunate instead of assisting them, as expected of a servant leader.

The play portrays both King Lear and Gloucester as irresponsible persons who lack the virtue of mercy (Archer, Turley, and Thomas 522). The King, in his capacity as the head of the throne, is expected to address the problems of the poor and less fortunate groups in society. Conversely, he ignores such issues. In the play, the King does not address the key issues affecting the needy. The King is self-centered and he does not exercise the servant style of leadership as expected of him. This self-centered nature of the King leads to the failure of his throne later on (Moore 182).

The irresponsible character of the King is also seen in his decision to delegate his roles and responsibilities to his irresponsible daughters, who are equally self-centered. Similarly, they do not care about the needs of the public (Edmiston and McKibben 89). In addition, the King has the responsibility of taking care of his youngest daughter. In addition, he has the responsibility of treating his daughters as equals (Woodford 113). However, due to his irresponsible character, he forces Cordelia out of his house and forgets about her. As a parent, one is supposed to take care of his/her children regardless of whether they are loyal or disloyal. However, the King is oblivious of his duties as a parent and a role model to his followers.

Just as the King has the responsibility of taking care of his daughter, Cordelia equally owes her father the duty of taking good care of him in his weak mental state (Moore 175). However, she neglects this role. On the other hand, Gloucester has the responsibility of taking care of his wife on top of remaining faithful (Archer, Turley, and Thomas 536). Husbands are expected to remain faithful to their wives. On the contrary, Gloucester’s philandering ways lead to the birth of a love child. This child later on causes problems in the kingdom by trying to rise to power illegitimately. In addition, Gloucester overlooks his responsibilities as a father by expelling one of his sons on grounds of disloyalty and dishonesty (Archer, Turley, and Thomas 521).

The theme of power is evident at the beginning of the play where King Lear is portrayed as powerful and authoritative (Ioppolo 173). The aspect of power is seen in how he conducts his business without consulting his close allies. For example, he conducts the dramatic ceremony to divide power between his two daughters in the watch of Gloucester, Kent, and others. These individuals should question the King’s decision, but they opt to remain silent and watch as the events unfold (Urkowitz 112).

Power in this tragedy is not only exercised at the national level, but also at the family level. Without consulting anyone, the King expels his youngest daughter on grounds of being disloyal to his kingship. Divine power is also evident in the play as the King seeks providential help especially after the two daughters mistreat him later in his helpless state (Edmiston and McKibben 87). The King is heard ordering divine powers to come down and take his part after having a serious quarrel with the daughters.

Finally, the theme of old age stands out towards the end of the play. Due to old age, King Lear has to give up leadership to his daughters by claiming that he does not want to go to the grave burdened (Moore 169). King Lear has the sense that old age forces one to surrender some responsibilities as a way of preparing for death. Goneril and Regan recognize their father’s old age. They argue that his madness is mainly due to his age. Seemingly, the play suggests that old age deserves respect as Lear calls upon the gods to look at his old age and intervene in overcoming his tribulations (Archer, Turley, and Thomas 518).

However, the two daughters do not respect the fact that their father is old, and thus he deserves respect. On the contrary, they insult, ridicule, and neglect him. In addition, they do not take instructions from him, which leads to the fall of the kingdom. Madness and old age stand out as the most critical factors that influence the King’s decisions (Edmiston and McKibben 87). The two factors cause the King to make uninformed decisions leading to the downfall of the kingdom soon after his retirement. The old age contributes to the severity of the King’s mental illness.

Archer, Jayne, Richard Turley, and Howard Thomas. “The Autumn King: Remembering the Land in King Lear.” Shakespeare Quarterly 63.4 (2012): 518-543. Print.

Edmiston, Brian, and Amy McKibben. “Shakespeare, rehearsal approaches, and dramatic inquiry: Literacy education for life.” English in Education 45.1 (2011): 86-101. Print.

Ioppolo, Grace. A Routledge Literary Sourcebook on William Shakespeare’s King Lear , New York: Psychology Press, 2003. Print.

Moore, Peter. “The Nature of King Lear.” English Studies 87.2 (2006): 169-190. Print.

Urkowitz, Steven. Shakespeare’s Revision of King Lear , Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. Print.

Woodford, Donna. Understanding King Lear: A student casebook to issues, sources, and historical documents . Santa Barbara: Greenwood Publishing, 2004. Print.

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King Lear - Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

King Lear is one of William Shakespeare’s tragedies, exploring themes of power, loyalty, madness, and the human condition. Essays on “King Lear” might delve into the character analysis, the motifs of sight and blindness, or the socio-political commentary within the narrative. This play also allows for exploration into the Elizabethan worldview, the dynamics of family and power, or its modern adaptations and the varying interpretations through different cultural or historical lenses. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to King Lear you can find in Papersowl database. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Animal Imagery in King Lear

Shakespeare uses all sorts of images to express different points in King Lear. One of those images is animals and I believe they are the most powerful images in the whole play. Shakespeare’s imagination is that of wild and menacing creatures with very cruel instincts. One of these creatures just so happens to be a dragon. Dragons are very possessive and always full of fire. No greater example of this would be in Act 1, Scene 1 where Lear compares […]

The Concept of Nothing in King Lear

In one of William Shakespeare’s famous tragedies, King Lear, the author depicts the story of an aging king’s descent into madness after attempting to divide his kingdom among his three daughters. Two of the daughters, Goneril and Regan, rob him of his power and sanity after giving away his kingdom to them, while the other sister, Cordelia, suffers. Eventually, tragic consequences overtake them all. The word “nothing” reoccurs constantly throughout the play in the mouths of multiple characters. The author […]

Shakespeare Uses Nature, both Literally and Figuratively

Shakespeare uses nature, both literally and figuratively throughout King Lear to portray characters, human nature, and human society, as well as to represent the emotional and physical status of characters. Nature, in its literal sense, is used in Act 3 to represent and mirror the emotions and mental status of King Lear. Shakespeare uses the raging storm as a reflection of Lear’s mental conflict against his gradual loss of sanity. The manic Lear stands out in the storm and bellows, […]

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The Nature of King Lear

The tragedy King Lear by William Shakespeare begins by King Lear dividing his kingdom amongst his daughters: Regan, Cordelia, and Goneril. The three of them were asked which one of them loves him the most. Goneril and Regan told King Lear what he wanted to hear, and they were given land. Cordelia, on the other hand, was completely honest and in the end was banished from Lear’s kingdom. By the end of the play, only a handful of characters are […]

King Lear, by William Shakespeare, is a Tragic Play

"King Lear, by William Shakespeare, is a tragic play about a king and his three daughters. King Lear has three daughters: Goneril, the eldest, Regan, the middle child, and Cordelia, the youngest and most beloved by Lear. Both Goneril and Regan are married to men of power respectively: Duke of Albany and Duke of Cornwall. Cordelia, on the other hand, is unmarried and is assumed, like all unmarried women of the time period, to be pure. Continuing, when King Lear […]

Patriarchy and the Shakespearean Woman

William Shakespeare writes during a time when patriarchy was prevalent. Shakespeare includes these personas and attitudes within his plays to illustrate how these ideals played out. He works also to create female characters that hold their male counterparts accountable. In this paper, there will be a review of patriarchal patterns within A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Henry IV, Macbeth, and King Lear but additionally how the female characters counteract the hegemonic masculinity. Because patriarchal patterns were prevalent in the time […]

Shakespeare’s Madness Within Hamlet and King Lear

How do you know if a person has gone mad? How do you know if a person is telling the truth? What about intention? Nowadays, we have psychologists, therapists and all kinds of doctors that help to diagnose mental illness. We are now aware of the different types of “craziness” that a person can be. What about hundreds of years ago? Just like today, some people were truly madmen, but of course, anyone has the ability to pretend to be […]

Seeing Love: a Reflection on King Lear

A tragedy is normally defined as a play that follows the series of events that lead to the downfall of a hero. King Lear is no exception to this rule. It shows the destruction and downfall of King Lear and the people who presided under him. Lear is an old man who seeks to retire and live out the rest of his life jumping between his three daughters. He plans to divide his kingdom between all three while keeping the […]

The Tempest Summary and Analysis

"The Tempest works out as a traditional comedy because Miranda and Ferdinand are kept from coming together as lovers until Prospero believes it is the right time. It seems that he had come up with his plan long ago because he is strangely aware of certain things that will happen, such as Miranda and Ferdinand falling for each other[1]. He thinks it is too soon for them to be together because they fell in love as soon as they saw […]

Struggles and Decisions of King Lear

"In Shakespeare’s play, King Lear, the story takes place in Britain, where the elderly King Lear struggles to decide which of his daughters will inherit his land and kingdom - Cordelia, Regan or Goneril. In Act I, Kent, the King’s right-hand man, advises him in saying, “See better, Lear.” Throughout the play, Shakespeare emphasizes the theme of blindness. Although the characters aren’t physically blind, they lack a moral vision due to their wealth and power, causing them to make rash […]

The Role of Women in King Lear

King Lear is a well renowned play about the patriarchal atrophy of a kingdom ruled by an impulsive king who decides to divide his power amongst his three daughters. As a sign of the times, the women in the play are held to a particular standard while the men are held to a laxer set of expectations. After viewing the play, I argue that the female characters are oppressed to fit into a mold that was seen as acceptable of […]

Sympathetic Character in Stories and Plays

"In many stories and plays, when a character is portrayed as “sympathetic” one means that the audience shares the fortunes and misfortunes of that character. One can choose if the character is worthy or unworthy of sympathy. A story identifies a character as worthy or unworthy of sympathy by defining the characters role in the story or play. The character can be a hero with their struggles and the hope for his success. Another being the rival or enemy of […]

King Lear: Critique between Power, Trespass and Forgiveness

Shakespeare’s story, King Lear, begins with the King handing over his kingdom and the responsibilities that comes with his title to his daughters. However, before he spreads his wealth to them, they must proclaim just how much they love and adore him as a father. The youngest daughter, Cordelia, does not follow her sisters in this game with King Lear and tells him the truth that she acts and feels as a daughter should. She illustrates this by saying, “Unhappy […]

Navigating the Complexities of Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’

"King Lear, by William Shakespeare is a confusing and convoluted tragedy about a king with three daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia, who doesn’t like the truth when he here’s it. Because it Is written in 17 century English, (it felt like I was trying to read Gaelic for the first time) it is extremely difficult to read. After trudging through the book my strongest feeling regarding the entire book is that someone should seriously consider a modern English format for […]

Reading Response: King Lear Act 4

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“There's nothing like suffering to remind us how not in control we actually are, how little power we ultimately have, and how much we ultimately need God.”- Tullian Tchividjian. How can a person settle with suffering? This question is raised in the biblical book of Job, and in Shakespeare's King Lear. Job and King Lear both experience suffering. Job and Lear loose everything that is valuable to them. However how each men handle his suffering and pain distinguishes him. Some […]

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We are going to analyse the famous play ‘King Lear’ by Shakespeare. This tragedy was written by the English author in 1605 but it was played the next year and the play address an act of betrayal of the daughters of the King Lear. The blind trust of a father that provides them all that he has but even so his own daughters prefer possessing all the power. The play starts with the decline of the energy of King Lear, […]

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How To Write An Essay On King Lear

Introduction to shakespeare's king lear.

Writing an essay on Shakespeare’s "King Lear" involves delving into one of the most profound tragedies ever written. In your introduction, establish "King Lear" as a work that explores complex themes such as power, betrayal, madness, and the human condition. Offer a brief summary of the plot, where an aging king divides his kingdom among his daughters based on their flattery, leading to a series of tragic events. Outline the focus of your essay, whether it be a character analysis, thematic exploration, or a study of the play’s dramatic structure. Setting the stage with a clear introduction is key to guiding the reader through your interpretation of this Shakespearean tragedy.

Analyzing Key Characters and Relationships

The body of your essay should include an in-depth analysis of the key characters and their relationships in "King Lear." If focusing on Lear himself, discuss his journey from pride and arrogance to madness and despair. Explore the dynamics between Lear and his daughters, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, and how their interactions propel the plot. Consider also the subplot involving Gloucester and his sons, Edgar and Edmund, drawing parallels or contrasts with the main storyline. Discuss how Shakespeare develops these characters, their motivations, and the consequences of their actions, contributing to the play's overarching themes.

Exploring Themes and Symbolism

"King Lear" is rich in themes and symbolism which deserve close examination. Discuss major themes such as the nature of evil, the vulnerability of the powerful, and the search for justice and redemption. Delve into the symbolism used by Shakespeare, such as the storm that rages as Lear’s madness peaks, representing the tumultuous chaos of his mind and kingdom. Analyze how these themes and symbols resonate with the audience, reflecting universal human experiences and emotions. This section should offer a thoughtful exploration of the play’s deeper meanings and its relevance both in Shakespeare’s time and today.

Concluding with the Impact and Legacy of King Lear

Conclude your essay by reflecting on the impact and legacy of "King Lear." Discuss its significance in the canon of Shakespeare’s works and its enduring relevance in modern times. Consider the play’s influence on literature, theater, and broader cultural discussions about power, family dynamics, and morality. Summarize how your analysis of "King Lear" contributes to a greater understanding of the play and its importance. A strong conclusion will tie together your insights and leave the reader with a deeper appreciation for one of Shakespeare’s most powerful tragedies.

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A Modern Perspective: King Lear

By Susan Snyder

Each of Shakespeare’s plays creates through language its distinctive geography. In the mental map generated by King Lear, the action occurs largely in this or that house, as opposed to this or that town. “The kingdom” is important, but not designated places in it. Even when Lear is outlining to his daughters their shares in that kingdom, he talks of natural features rather than named sites. The striking exception to this pattern is Dover: this place is first introduced in 3.1 , and named ten times thereafter, underlining its status in the action as a kind of magnet-site to which every major character except the Fool is drawn in the latter half of the play. Regan and Cornwall harp on the place-name obsessively as they interrogate the captive Gloucester:

CORNWALL   Where hast thou sent the King?

GLOUCESTER   To Dover.

Wherefore to Dover? Wast thou not charged at

Wherefore to Dover? Let him answer that.

I am tied to th’ stake, and I must stand the course.

REGAN   Wherefore to Dover?

( 3.7.62 –68)

The repeated questions have an immediate dramatic point, certainly: Regan and Cornwall are trying to make Gloucester admit his complicity with the French force that Cordelia is leading into Britain to rescue her father. Nor is there any question why most of the characters go to Dover. That is where Cordelia will land: from her and her army, the Lear party can expect “welcome and protection” ( 3.6.98 ), and against this French expeditionary force Goneril, Regan, Edmund, and the reluctant Albany must rally on the shore to fight. But repeating and insisting on the apparently simple question “Wherefore to Dover?” generates a certain excess of meaning, and suggests that Dover has significance beyond literal location.

And indeed, when we turn our attention to Lear and Gloucester at the very center of the dramatic action, the forces that propel these characters to Dover seem more fated than comprehensible and willed. While others may wish him to seek comfort from Cordelia, the mad Lear is on his own journey of self-discovery and cannot bear the shame of such a meeting with the daughter he wronged. Gloucester, blind and despairing, seeks only death at Dover. One place is as good as another for suicide, one might think. But Gloucester takes great trouble to get to Dover cliff, as if there were some peculiar rightness about this one spot as the stage for his exhausted exit from the world. The place again assumes special meaning in his insistent “Know’st thou the way to Dover? . . . Dost thou know Dover?” ( 4.1.63 , 81 ).

Paying attention to these questions—“Wherefore to Dover?” “Dost thou know Dover?”—can focus for us several kinds of dynamic that work themselves out in King Lear. In Gloucester’s mind, the reality of Dover is a cliff, where the land ends abruptly and the sea begins: a sharp demarcation between the familiar and the unknown. After he has first caused harm by being easygoing and credulous (“I stumbled when I saw”) and then suffered shocking mutilation, Gloucester’s awakened self-knowledge has brought him to a physical and spiritual low point. He goes to Dover, the boundary site, to cast off the burden of his life: “From that place / I shall no leading need” ( 4.1.87 –88). But this edge of nothingness becomes for Gloucester a place of radically new vision. Even in his own anticipating imagination, the cliff’s high head “Looks fearfully in the confinèd deep” ( 4.1.84 ), as if it is gazing into the alien element. When they arrive at Dover, the words of Edgar as Poor Tom spread out the disorienting new perspective:

                                            How fearful

And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low!

The crows and choughs that wing the midway air

Show scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down

Hangs one that gathers samphire—dreadful trade;

Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.

The fishermen that walk upon the beach

Appear like mice. . . .

                                   I’ll look no more

Lest my brain turn and the deficient sight

Topple down headlong.

( 4.6.15 –29)

In fact, they are nowhere near the cliff. Edgar is deceiving his father, leading him through an elaborate enactment of his despair and remorse, in order that he may put these behind him and move into a totally different posture of acceptance. This speech that so sharply images the unseen precipice brings home to us Gloucester’s inner crisis and the revolution of vision he undergoes at the extremity of life.

King Lear goes through his own psychological extremities in Dover. Brought there by his adherents to be put under Cordelia’s protection, he is plunged by the very prospect of that reunion into greater anguish. Lear retreats from facing the daughter he once cast off:

A sovereign shame so elbows him—his own

 unkindness,

That stripped her from his benediction, turned her

To foreign casualties, gave her dear rights

To his dog-hearted daughters—these things sting

His mind so venomously that burning shame

Detains him from Cordelia.

( 4.3.51 –57)

At the play’s opening, Lear in his rage tried to erase this unaccommodating, plain-speaking daughter, to negate both her and the filial tie between them. “Better thou / Hadst not been born”; “we / Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see / That face of hers again” ( 1.1.269 –70, 304 –6). He has struggled in the meantime to keep Cordelia and his bond to her banished : from his sight, from his conscious mind. Her reappearance now, asserting that bond, is like Freud’s return of the repressed that stings while it clarifies. Before he can encounter her, Lear at Dover plumbs the depths of madness even more deeply ( 4.6 ). Still acting the autocratic monarch and magistrate as he reviews his archers, pardons and condemns wrongdoers, he lays hold through these fantasized scenes on truths about himself, his limitations, his participation in grimy human nature. When brought together at last with Cordelia, the shattered old man marks his own extremity by insisting he must be dead—“You do me wrong to take me out o’ th’ grave” ( 4.7.51 )—but the reconciliation that follows is on very human terms: “Pray you now, forget, and forgive. I am old and foolish” ( 98 –99).

Lear and Gloucester both go to the edge at Dover, and both come up against death (Gloucester wants to die, Lear thinks he is dead). What they achieve instead is a kind of reorientation, a transformed perspective that could not come about except by the radical revaluation that such extremities force upon them. We should recall that Dover is not just the edge of Britain but the place in that island country that is closest to foreign lands. At this farthest limit of the familiar, Lear and Gloucester confront the unknown—which is, paradoxically, their own selves. And, like the French army that pushes in at Dover, this alien force brings both great fear and deliverance.

Dover plays its part in other movements that inform King Lear. One of these dynamics we might call “beyond the end.” It has been operating in a way since the play’s opening, when Lear formally signals an end to his power through abdication but then keeps right on acting like a king, as he banishes Kent and Cordelia and travels from daughter to daughter with a royal retinue of a hundred knights. Mainly, though, it is an end to suffering that is repeatedly sought after, promised—and then denied. On what he believes to be Dover cliff, Gloucester thinks to shake off the world’s affliction because he cannot “bear it longer” ( 4.6.47 ). But when Edgar negates this closure of self-willed death, his father is pushed to endure yet more: “Henceforth I’ll bear / Affliction . . .” ( 93 –94). Edgar himself, in his outcast state, has already experienced personally this rhythm of being pushed yet further. After the miseries of the storm, he feels himself at the lowest point of Fortune’s wheel, which must therefore turn him upward again; but then his father enters with bleeding holes instead of eyes, a sight to mock any balanced prediction of Fortune’s unpredictable ways. Edgar’s comforting conventional image of the course of events as a wheel guided by Fortune, which dictates that “The worst returns to laughter” ( 4.1.6 ), yields at this new, overwhelming pain to something much more like the wheel that the Fool has earlier shown us, something careening downhill out of control ( 2.4.78 –80). “Who is ’t can say ‘I am at the worst’?” wonders a stunned Edgar, pushed to his own new extremity; “I am worse than e’er I was” ( 4.1.27 –28). Lear, as we have seen, avoids the closure of suffering offered by Cordelia and runs on to endure more laceration in his madness. After father and daughter are at last reconciled, the comfortable end they promise each other is foreclosed again when her forces lose the battle and they are both taken prisoner. Even in the appalling finality of Cordelia’s death, Lear’s own end is postponed, so that he can suffer yet further agonies over her body before exhaustion at last takes him. What the awestruck survivors record at the play’s close for both Gloucester and Lear is this endurance of repeated blows, beyond the end:

            The wonder is he hath endured so long. . . .

            The oldest hath borne most.

( 5.3.384 , 394 )

The special emotional force that many feel in King Lear has much to do with this peculiar strategy of repeatedly suggesting a limit to pain and then frustrating the expectation; the dashed hopes of audience as well as characters intensify the suffering that follows.

Both of the dynamics so far discussed display kinds of pattern: the redemptive one of descending into the depths to be rewarded with new vision, the intensifying one of promising a stop to suffering only to bring on yet more. A third dynamic is akin to that of expectations denied, but is in its very nature more random and erratic. The Fool is its chief exponent. Through scene after scene, as the tormented king suffers one blow after another, the capering Fool by his side responds with jokes and reductive nonsense. The following short sequence may stand for many moments where heroic pathos is suddenly jarred by slapstick comedy:

O me, my heart, my rising heart! But down!

FOOL  Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the

eels when she put ’em i’ th’ paste alive. She

knapped ’em o’ th’ coxcombs with a stick and

cried “Down, wantons, down!”

( 2.4.135 –39)

On Lear’s towering rage and pain, the Fool superimposes a ludicrous kitchen scene with a foolish woman struggling to slap down live eels into a pastry. The degrading image complicates our sympathetic identification with Lear’s royal pathos, enables simultaneously a more distanced and critical view which finds the king as foolish as that cockney and his imperious commands as ineffective as if they were addressed to a bunch of wriggling eels. With such dislocating effects, the Fool’s patter again and again threatens Lear’s heroic status—reduces him momentarily from his royal uniqueness to any ordinary, foolish old man, reduces his experience from world-shattering cataclysm to the commonplace, predictable fate of any father silly enough to give away his property and become dependent on his heirs. When Lear in the storm summons thunder, lightning, and torrents of rain in language of cosmic power and commands them to destroy the world that has so devastated him, the Fool thinks more prosaically that, even if it must be shared with hypocrites, “a dry house is better than this rainwater out o’ door” ( 3.2.12 –13). They are wet and unsheltered. Cosmic concerns shrink suddenly to homely needs. However titanic a figure Lear presents in the storm, we cannot shut out the other image opened by the Fool’s down-to-earth practicality: that of an old man comically at odds with reality, giving orders to the universe.

The Fool disappears from the play in Act 3 , but his syncopated rhythm continues, grotesque comedy repeatedly threatening tragic dignity. To some extent the Fool’s role of nonsensical deflation is taken over by Lear himself. Already his early tantrums have been open to interpretation as overreactions to slights that are less than earth-shaking, bringing him close to comic self-parody. In later scenes the very language of wayward association and non sequitur that manifests his madness keeps him hovering between tragic grandeur and absurdity. The Fool is still with him when he arraigns his absent daughters in the mock trial of 3.6 , but Lear is now himself a source of grotesque comedy, addressing his real grievance against Goneril to a joint-stool and couching it in an absurd image: she “kicked the poor king her father” ( 3.6.51 –52).

If Gloucester’s sufferings at first seem exempt from these grace notes of absurdity, he is nevertheless exposed at “Dover cliff” to the extreme of comic degradation. After the long buildup to a dramatic suicide leap (matching his “climb” in the script), the old man simply topples over ( 4.6.51 ). That which, as an idea of an action, arouses not a smile (i.e., Edgar leading his father to a nonexistent cliff and allowing him to go through the motions of throwing himself over), when physically acted out becomes something like a clown’s pratfall. At his most serious moral climax, Gloucester enacts the supreme indignity of falling on his nose. And when he intersects with Lear later in this scene, the pain of these two human ruins is punctuated by further absurdity. The mad Lear finds in his former friend only grotesque similitudes: Goneril with a white beard, a superannuated blind Cupid ( 4.6.115 , 152 ).

The final absurdity, the most shattering non sequitur, is Cordelia’s death. It is hard to see any dramatic logic that prepares for this death or makes it an inevitable consequence of previous action, especially when the strong redemptive movement seems to point us in just the opposite direction, i.e., to the refounded relation of an enlightened Lear to his newly valued youngest daughter. Edmund does indeed tell us that if Lear and Cordelia are captured they will be shown no mercy, and we see him sending off a captain with orders that we suspect are to be fatal for the king and his daughter, but Edmund is soon defeated by Edgar and in his dying repentance rescinds the order. He is, for no discernible reason, too late. The entrance of Lear with the dead Cordelia in his arms unites absurdity at its most cosmic with the second dynamic, expectations of better times frustrated by the blow that makes things worse than before. At the same time, this unexpected disaster violently contradicts the pronounced movement toward new wisdom through suffering.

As we live through the action of the play and experience its conclusion, how do we weight these dynamics that are similarly persistent but so radically different from each other in impact and import? Individual readers and viewers may well differ in their reactions. Does the persistent strain of reductive grotesquerie make Lear and Gloucester ironic figures rather than tragic, their actions pathetic gropings in a senseless universe? Or can they be felt as all the more heroic in triumphing over the forces of absurdity and random cruelty to arrive at an ethic of love and social obligation, an ethic no less necessary to the human community even if the larger universe is amoral? If wayward comedy attends their presentation, does the resultant laughter distance or intensify participation in their pain? Does Cordelia’s death render Lear’s painful progress meaningless, or does it force us to reevaluate in less sentimental terms the limits placed on any such progress by the human condition itself? At the very end, as Albany and Edgar look to a future beyond Lear, is the final stress on reordering more humanely the “gored state” ( 5.3.389 ), or rather on slogging stoically on, beyond the “promised end” which has once more been denied?

When we look away from Lear and Gloucester, the careers of other characters also defy easy moral and psychological assessment. Edgar’s course is perhaps morally comprehensible in outline as he falls from high position to the condition of a destitute beggar and then wins his way back to his rightful estate, expanding his wisdom and sympathy in the process. Yet as Edgar at the play’s beginning is hardly a blind, selfish Lear, we may wonder if his suffering is not more gratuitous than redemptive. Through Edgar’s long engagement with the blind Gloucester, in his various disguises as beggar or countryman, the reader or viewer may well be anticipating the climactic moment when this devoted son reveals his true identity to the father who cast him off. But when it finally comes, that revelation is not shown to us but is only narrated. More unexpectedly, even shockingly, the revelation kills Gloucester. Does Gloucester’s death in extremes of joy and grief fittingly conclude his long painful spiritual odyssey, or is it yet another indication that random absurdity governs events, making nonsense of Edgar’s redemptive agenda? When Lear in defeat cares nothing for loss of royal power and serenely invites Cordelia to an idyllic life in prison where each will be totally absorbed in the other (“Come, let’s away to prison,” 5.3.9 ), Cordelia says nothing in response. Does Lear too unthinkingly accept the congealing of her young life with his old one, and look forward to a symbiosis that blots out her separate identity? So it could seem from the perspective of this daughter, who so firmly resisted Lear’s initial wish to have all her love himself. From this point of view, in fact—the need of any child to break away from a demanding, all-engrossing parent—even the actions of Goneril and Regan escape neat categorization as unfounded pure evil. So, from another angle, does the course of Edmund, their ally in the play’s oppositions of good children against bad. Even while these oppositions seem so stark as to invite a semiallegorical interpretation, Edmund can also be understood sociologically, as produced by the glaring social inequities of which this play recurrently reminds us. His malevolent ambition takes appropriate revenge on a society that has marginalized him as a bastard, automatically denying him the secure social position that otherwise his parentage and his talents would ensure.

Stark moral oppositions, then, are crossed in this complex play by trajectories of sociological and psychological questioning, just as the unexpected supplement and the random absurdity complicate Lear’s and Gloucester’s journeys toward insight. Like Dover, King Lear should act to open up vision, not close it down.

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Develop a thesis statement for KING LEAR: hidden loyalty/ blindness and sight / argument

EF_Simone 2 / 1985   Jul 22, 2009   #2 The second seems easiest. How does blindness function as a metaphor in the play? What does Lear not see? How does his blindness to reality hurt him?

EF_Sean 6 / 3488   Jul 26, 2009   #3 And if you go with 2, don't forget to focus heavily on Gloucester, whose sees most clearly when he has been blinded by Cornwall.

peachykeen 1 / 6   Nov 15, 2009   #4 King Lear Essay Thesis; any tips on how I can find something to argue? I have been trying to come up with a thesis for my King Lear essay for over a week now and I am still wrestling with it. The essay topic is: Compare the filial relationship of Gloucester and Edgar with that of Lear and Cordelia. How do these relationships comment upon one another? Consider the development of each relationship and it's conclusion. How does each relationship contribute to themes in the play, such as, self-knowledge, nature, appearance-and-reality? Avoid plot summary. I want to say something about how both relationships come to a tragic and wholly preventable end due to the paternal figure's incorrect perception of reality and perhaps how the play cautions against the dangers of being led astray by false perceptions. That just seems kind of obvious to me, though. It doesn't answer the so what question. I've made a list of major similarities and differences in the courses of the two relationships throughout the play, but I can't seem to come up with anything that is really arguable. Does anyone have any tips on how I can find something to argue? What do you do when you're stuck on your thesis? I want to be clear that I'm not asking for a thesis, just any help on how to come up with one myself would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! Sarah

peachykeen 1 / 6   Nov 18, 2009   #6 Check thesis - King Lear This is the thesis I have developed for my essay on King Lear: Lear and Gloucester's journeys in relation their respective children, Cordelia and Edgar, explore the theme of conversion and salvation. Both fathers sin against their children, must be stripped of their worldly preoccupations before they can recognize the truth, and finally accept their child's unconditional love and the salvation that comes with it. What needs to be clearer? Is it debatable enough? Is it incomplete? Does it give too much information? Is the phrasing awkward? Should it be more concise? Any other improvements you could suggest would be much appreciated. My TA's major criticism of my last essay was that my thesis should have been more sophisticated and less even-handed, so I want to make sure I have a good thesis this time. Thanks! Sarah

pheelyks - / 19   Nov 20, 2009   #8 Being fairly familiar with King Lear, I think I understand your TA's objection (though I agree with Kevin that the point should have been made clearer). Your thesis essentially states what happens in the play, without noting the drastic differences that exist in the parental relationships between Lear and Cordelia and Gloucester and Edgar. Lear's sin against his daughter comes from his own pride, whereas Gloucester's comes from foolishness--he allows himself to be tricked by his other son, Edmond. How do the differences in their sins affect their relationships with their children? With themselves? With each other? It is true that they both eventually find salvation and love of sorts, but in very different ways--what about their circumstances cause these differences? Your thesis outlines their similarities very well, but these characters are not presented side by side in the play because they are the same, but rather because they are very different when closely examined. This is where your thesis should explore.

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Looks fearfull in the confin'd deep.

Bring me but to the very brim of it...

... From that place I shall no leading need."(IV.i.73)

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King Lear by William Shakespeare

Updated 18 November 2022

Subject Biology ,  Identity ,  Islam

Downloads 60

Category Science ,  Sociology

Topic Human ,  Individual Identity ,  Muslim

Because of the essence of individual identity, it is a requisite for the formation of a sense of self, which is necessary for everyone's development as a mature person. As a consequence, each person's opinions are divided into a number of categories, such as man or woman, Muslim or Catholic, and even as small as a family member. Regardless of how people's self-identities collide, identities have a much wider scope, which makes them collective in the sense that they spread to cultural groups and nations, making people feel bad when their identities are violated. Having an identity in the community gives a sense of security, and many people are willing to take drastic measures towards ensuring that they achieve this cause. In King Lear, William Shakespeare introduces arguments about justice, authority versus chaos, and reconciliation and he shows the actions which lead to undesirable results (Kittredge, 1940). Apparently, from this play, Shakespeare demonstrates the manner in which it becomes difficult for characters such as Edgar who are involved in criminal acts to have a chance of regaining their identity. The fight for restoring self-identity in the face of the expectations and opinions of people from the society is shown throughout the play by the overlapping motifs of madness and betrayal. Motifs are defined as recurring contrasts, structures and literary devices applicable in developing and informing the major themes of any play or story. On the same note, the primary emphasis is placed on the characters of Edgar and the manner in which he became the hero regardless of his tenuous identity in the entire play. Analysis of the Play Justice is the main ingredient for the progress of people, and neither is it readily offered, nor avoidable, and its every step needs suffering, sacrifice, and struggle. As a play, King Lear is filled with awfulness and cruelty of humans, as is shown by the number of terrible events which have been propagated by major characters such as Edgar. Apparently, this had led to questions being raised on the existence of justice in the present world, and the nature of its indifference and hostility to humankind, thus; prompting different characters to voice their opinions. The unfolding events from the lack of justice in the play lead to series of betrayal among the characters in the play. Edgar starts the play as a clueless wealthy son of Gloucester who is regarded as the most powerful man in the kingdom, and his illegitimate brother called Edmund manipulates him into trusting him. Edmund succeeds in laying false accusations on Edgar for planning to kill their father, subsequently leading to Edgar's expulsion from the society and disguising as a Tom O’Bedlam for purposes of survival. The wrongful conviction deprived Edgar of every good thing he had at his disposal, which saw him being robbed his identity. In these turbulent times, Edgar experiences the horrible King Lear events, and he did intervene to prevent more horrible things to come into play, and through his determination and hard work, his survival becomes necessary as he seeks revenge towards the end, which forms part of justice. To this effect, Gloucester on learning of his planned death, states that the gods kill them for sport (Kittredge 1940, p. 37) while Edgar claims that the gods are just (Kittredge 1940, pg. 169). Authority is an important aspect of gaining control in the society, and for an individual from the royal family, once stripped of these powers, their sense of self-identity fades. Where there is no authority, there are chances that there will be chaos, and the latter would result in series of madness as shown in King Lear. In as much as the story focuses on dynamics of the family, much emphasis is also laid on political authority, which is demonstrated by King Lear who is not only a father, and by giving power to Regan and Goneril, he is risking cruelty and chaos in the whole of Britain (Kittredge 1940, p. 260). Accordingly, this prompts Edmund to plan on his ascension to power at the expense of Edgar, making the kingdom plunged into civil crisis. Ideally, where there is no authority in control of people in a nation, there are chances that madness will develop. Accordingly, in the play, madness is a major motif as it is connected to incidents of hidden wisdom and disorder, as shown through Edgar and The Fool. On the one hand, The Fool who often spies for King Lear gives his information in babbles, and later, Lear turns insane when he remembers the chaos that has befallen his kingdom. On the other hand, the insanity of Lear provides him with a chance of having great wisdom through reducing him to bare humanity, and he is not in royalty anymore, thereby learning the aspects of humanity. Edgar joins in the series of madness as he provides valuable information to the King, and as an insane beggar, he becomes hardened and prepared to defeat Edmund when the play comes to an end. Therefore, there is the need for an establishment of a firm authority in leadership to ensure that there is a platform for offering justice. Reconciliation is regarded as an important aspect in efforts of trying to regain peaceful relations between two conflicting parties or nations at war. This is an essential element that seeks to repair the betrayal and madness that is portrayed in the play, King Lear. Ideally, after the turnout of events which led to Edgar's father believes that his son wanted to kill him which resulted in his exile and wrongful conviction, any reader would anticipate Edgar being angry at his father. However, Edgar becomes very kind to his father in his blindness, guiding and caring for him, and taking extreme measures such as killing the man who attempted to capture his dad. While doing all these, he still finds it difficult to tell his father about his identity until the moment when his father was dying (Kittredge 1940, p. 190). Additionally, Gloucester assuming the innocence of Edgar states that he wishes he could be reunited with his son. He states that "O dear son Edgar… Might I but live to see thee in my touch, / I'd say I had eyes again (Kittredge 1940, p. 25). Gloucester died from a combination of joy and shock when Edgar revealed his identity to him, which explains why he kept his identity at bay as he feared something fateful would happen to his father. It is important to note that this is an example of an act of forgiveness, which culminates to reconciliation, the basis which justice is dispensed to every member of a community. Conclusion Apparently, this paper has adequately covered the aspects of identity as shown in the play The Tragedy of King Lear, through using different motifs and themes to illustrate the intended concepts. Furthermore, there have been series of the definition of critical issues which have been supported by arguments in a bid to ensure that there is coherent and free flowing information. Edgar, just as shown by the different discussions, is an example of an individual trying to fight against all the odds and societal expectations towards making himself relevant to the principles of the society. Indeed, Edgar has shown the proper steps that should be taken in the event one is faced with a series of challenges such as identity crisis. Despite the false accusations and convictions, the exile from the country, disguising as a homeless person and being stripped of all his wealth, Edgar still did not lose hope in re-establishing himself and went ahead to help his father. Therefore, Edgar and Edmund alongside other characters discussed herein have successfully illustrated the means of integrating motifs with the main themes portrayed in the play. The topics of betrayal and blindness have mixed appropriately with the issues of justice, authority and power, and reconciliation. Therefore, it is essential to put up all the struggle as a means of ensuring there are an establishment and achievement of self-identity which is an important element to any individual. The fight for regaining self-identity in the face of the expectations and opinions of people from the society is shown throughout the play by the overlapping motifs of madness and betrayal. Work Cited Kittredge, George L. "The Tragedy of King Lear by William Shakespeare." (1940).

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‘Jamaica to the world’

A small town on a small island celebrates kamala harris’ meteoric rise.

By Fredreka Schouten, Zoë Todd, Curt Merrill and Byron Manley, CNN

Published August 17, 2024

BROWN’S TOWN, Jamaica — Three and a half years ago, Sherman Harris gathered together a clutch of family and friends at his home on a hilltop here in rural Jamaica to watch his cousin step into history.

As Kamala Harris took the oath of office as vice president of the United States, the room erupted in screams and tears, he recalled.

“Even talking to you now, I feel some sort of tears from my eyes too, you know,” Sherman Harris, 59, said in an interview with CNN. “It's like tears of joy.”

Next week, they will gather again before his widescreen television to watch Harris make history once more, when she formally accepts the Democratic presidential nomination — becoming the first Black woman, the first Jamaican American and the first Asian American to become a major party’s White House standard-bearer.

Although the milestone will be celebrated by her relatives in this town of some 12,000 people on the island’s northern coast, Harris’ Caribbean roots still are coming into focus for the millions of Americans getting acquainted with her after she was suddenly thrust to the top of the Democratic ticket a month ago when President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid and endorsed his vice president.

Already, her Republican rival, Donald Trump, has sought to question her Black identity as the two vie for support among African American voters in states such as Michigan and Georgia who could determine the outcome of this fall’s race. At a gathering of Black journalists last month, Trump falsely claimed that Harris had only recently opted to identify as Black out of political opportunism.

“I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump asked in widely derided comments.

Harris is both. She’s the daughter of an Indian-born mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer researcher who died in 2009, and a Jamaican-born father, Donald Harris, an 85-year-old retired Stanford University economist, who has largely remained in the background of his daughter’s public life.

He hails from a family that stretches back for generations in Brown’s Town, a market town in St. Ann Parish, where vendors clustered along the main drag on a recent Sunday morning to sell glossy green avocados, yams and bundles of fragrant thyme.

It's a place Kamala Harris knows from childhood visits and readily claims.

“Half of my family is from St. Ann Parish in Jamaica,” she told the country’s prime minister, Andrew Holness, during a 2022 visit to the White House. “I know I share that history with millions of Americans.”

And it’s a town that proudly claims her.

“You have to recognize individuals who come from humble abodes and really excel,” said Michael Belnavis, the mayor of St. Ann Parish who is mulling ways to honor Harris should she prevail in November. “Coming from Brown’s Town is as humble as it gets.”

Deep roots and a powerful matriarch

The town was named after Hamilton Brown, a slave owner who came to the island from Ireland and, according to family lore, is believed to have been an ancestor of Kamala Harris’ great-grandmother, Christiana Brown, also a descendant of enslaved Jamaicans.

“Miss Chrishy,” as Christiana Brown was known, helped raise her grandson, Donald Harris, who described her in an essay first published in 2018 in the Jamaica Global Online as “reserved and stern in look, firm with ‘the strap’ but capable of the most endearing and genuine acts of love, affection, and care.”

Harris has said his interest in economics and politics was sparked, in part, by observing Miss Chrishy as she went about her daily routine of operating her dry goods store in Brown’s Town.

Although she died in 1951, Miss Chrishy looms large to this day among her descendants, who still talk of her elegant dresses, proper manners and the high standards she set for her children and grandchildren.

“She was the backbone,” said Latoya Harris-Ghartey, Sherman Harris’ 43-year-old daughter. Harris-Ghartey is executive director of Jamaica’s National Education Trust, a government-aligned organization focused on developing the island’s education infrastructure.

Her great-grandmother “believed in getting your books and having a solid education, those sorts of things,” Harris-Ghartey said. “I think that has passed on throughout the line. Everybody always pushes you to be better, to excel.”

Miss Chrishy had several children with Joseph Harris, who raised cattle and grew pimento berries — allspice in its dried form — on a farm perched high above Brown’s Town. He died in 1939, a year after Donald Harris was born, and is buried on the grounds of St. Mark’s Anglican Church — a sanctuary founded by Hamilton Brown and where Harrises have long worshipped.

Brown’s Town might be a small place, but the family has occupied a prominent position there as landowners and businesspeople.

Today, Sherman Harris — Donald Harris’ first cousin — still lives on and works the Harris land, in an area known as Orange Hill for a citrus grove that once stood there, he said. One of its dominant features is the Harris Quarry, started by Sherman Harris’ late father, Newton. Sherman runs it now, and it still produces crushed limestone and bricks.

It’s one of his ventures. On a tour with CNN journalists, he proudly pointed out the three-story commercial building he owns in the heart of Brown’s Town.

It’s to this landscape that Donald Harris would bring Kamala and her younger sister, Maya, on holidays, according to his 2018 essay — taking them through the town’s bustling marketplace, touring his primary school and other landmarks he found meaningful. He recounted the trio trekking through the cow pastures and overgrown paths on Orange Hill during one memorable visit in 1970, as they retraced his boyhood ramblings over the family property.

“Upon reaching the top of a little hill that opened much of that terrain to our full view, Kamala, ever the adventurous and assertive one, suddenly broke from the pack, leaving behind Maya the more cautious one, and took off like a gazelle in Serengeti, leaping over rocks and shrubs and fallen branches, in utter joy and unleashed curiosity, to explore that same enticing terrain,” he wrote. “I couldn’t help thinking there and then: What a moment of exciting rediscovery being handed over from one generation to another!”

Sherman Harris remembers all the cousins playing together during those jaunts to Jamaica in the 1970s, while the adults feasted and socialized. He and Kamala are the same age, born just days apart in October 1964.

What stands out most from those memories, he said, is how smart the girls were – just like their dad, who rose from a rural boyhood to earn a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley and become the first Black economics professor granted tenure at Stanford .

“Brilliant girls,” Sherman Harris said of Kamala and Maya. Even as young children, they would quiz him on the island’s current affairs, and “I wasn’t able to answer them,” he recalled. “I had to ask Daddy.”

Sherman Harris views his cousin’s ascension as yet another example of “Jamaica to the world,” a reference to the island’s culture, reggae music and food catching fire across the globe. It’s also a sign to him of the Harris drive.

“We have never ventured in much failure, you know,” he said of the Harris clan, adding that the family members are “always successful in whatever we do.”

Out of the spotlight

Even as his daughter climbs to new heights, Donald Harris has remained largely out of the spotlight.

He and Shyamala Gopalan, who met in the 1960s as graduate students at Berkeley, fell in love fighting for civil rights, Kamala Harris wrote of her parents in her 2019 memoir, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey.” But by the time she was 5, “they had stopped being kind to one another” and soon separated.

They divorced a few years later, and Gopalan became the parent who had the greatest influence in shaping her daughters’ lives, raising them, Kamala Harris wrote, to be “confident, proud black women” in a country that would see them, first and foremost, as African American. Kamala Harris would go on to attend one of the country’s most storied Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Howard University in Washington, DC, and pledge as an Alpha Kappa Alpha while there, joining the nation’s oldest Black sorority.

In her book, Harris “goes on for page after page about her mom,” said veteran California political reporter Dan Morain, who wrote a 2021 biography, “Kamala’s Way: An American Life,” that charted the Democrat’s rise through Golden State and national politics. “She’s really important in her life, and I believe her mother is still with her on a daily basis,” years after her death, he said.

“But she passes over her father,” Morain said.

Harris wrote that her father “remained a part of our lives” after the divorce, spending time with them on weekends and in the summer.

The senior Harris complained that his relationship with his daughters was subject to “arbitrary limits” after a contentious custody fight. The state of California, he wrote bitterly in the essay, operated on the “false assumption … that fathers cannot handle parenting (especially in the case of this father, ‘a neegroe from da eyelans’ was the Yankee stereotype, who might just end up eating his children for breakfast!)”

“Nevertheless, I persisted, never giving up on my love for my children or reneging on my responsibilities as their father,” he added.

Donald Harris did not respond to several interview requests from CNN and largely has shied away from publicity — even as his daughter stands on the cusp of another history-making milestone in his adopted country.

He did emerge publicly during Harris’ 2020 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination to publicly chastise her for joking that of course she had smoked marijuana , given her Jamaican background.

In a since-deleted statement posted on Jamaica Global Online, Donald Harris said his ancestors were “turning in their grave” to see their “family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity” connected with a “fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker.”

Damien King, a retired economics professor at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica who now runs a think tank on the island, first met the elder Harris in the mid-1980s and said he was not surprised by the public rebuke. “He is somebody who has always been unafraid to speak his mind,” King said.

And among the economists who know him, Harris is considered a free thinker, willing to challenge his field’s “orthodoxy,” King added.

Former Harris student Steven Fazzari, an economist who teaches at Washington University in St. Louis, described his former professor as someone who thinks “deeply about economic theory.”

“He’s not the kind of economist who’s going to talk to you about what the GDP is going to be and what inflation is going to be in the next quarter,” he said.

Harris, who served at Fazzari’s doctoral thesis adviser at Stanford, encouraged originality and was a friendly and supportive figure to his students, Fazzari added.

Fazzari had not seen Harris for years, until he and several other former students arranged a dinner with him last fall in Washington, where Harris maintains a residence.

“It was wonderful,” he said of the dinner. “Don Harris in his mid-80s is just like the Don Harris I knew at Stanford. He was articulate. He was gracious. He remembered all of us. He remembered all of our dissertation topics.”

‘That’s my cousin running’

Kamala Harris’ ancestry has already been thrust into the center of the presidential campaign, as Trump grapples with how to confront her last-minute candidacy and reaches for a strategy to blunt her momentum.

During a combative interview at the National Association of Black Journalists’ convention late last month, Trump went personal — falsely claiming that Harris had opted to “turn Black.” He later inexplicably called her “Kamabla” in series of posts on his Truth Social site.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, meanwhile, has questioned her authenticity — calling her a “phony” who “grew up in Canada,” a reference to the years she spent living in Montreal, where her mother had taken a teaching position at McGill University.

The mischaracterization of Harris’ racial identity “plays into these tropes of the tragic mulatto who’s doomed and sneaky and deceptive” and belongs nowhere, said Danielle Casarez Lemi, who studies race and ethnic politics as a Tower Center fellow at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She’s also the co-author, alongside Nadia Brown, of “Sister Style: The Politics of Appearance for Black Women Political Elites.”

“It’s a way to try to damage her credibility anyway that he can,” she said of Trump. “Whether it’s going to work, who knows?”

Dahlia Walker-Huntington, a Jamaican American lawyer and longtime Harris supporter, called Trump’s comments challenging the vice president’s racial identity “condescending.”

“It is also ignorant to think that we can only have one identity” in a society that is increasingly multiracial and multicultural, said Walker-Huntington, who divides her time between South Florida and Kingston. “The America of 2024 is the America that Kamala Harris represents.”

Walker-Huntington said she has followed Harris’ career for years, going back to her time as a local prosecutor and California attorney general. She first met Harris at a Florida fundraiser in 2018 for Florida Sen. Bill Nelson’s campaign and would go on to become an enthusiastic backer of Harris’ short-lived presidential bid.

Now, along with other Caribbean American supporters, Walker-Huntington is activating networks of friends, relatives and acquaintances in the hopes of getting Harris over the top this time.

“I support her because she’s a strong woman, and she stands up for her convictions,” Walker-Huntington said. “The fact that she’s Jamaican, that’s icing on the cake. It makes me feel like that’s my cousin running for the presidency of the United States.”

CNN has reached out to the Harris campaign.

Those who know her say she celebrates her ties to the island to this day. On the eve of her swearing-in as vice president, Harris told The Washington Post that her father instilled in her and her sister a deep pride in Jamaica and its history. Walker-Huntington and Winston Barnes — an elected official in Miramar, Florida, who also hails from Jamaica — said she was quick to banter with a group of them in a Jamaican accent when they first met her at the Nelson event a few years ago.

The vice president’s cousin, Sherman Harris, said he has not seen her for years, but Donald Harris still visits with the family.

Jamaica has formally recognized Donald Harris, bestowing on him an Order of Merit in 2021 for “outstanding contribution to National Development.” Over the years, he has served as an economic adviser to the Jamaican government and helped craft a 2012 strategy to encourage economic growth on the island.

Back in Brown’s Town, there’s been talk of adding Kamala Harris’ visage to the mural of prominent Jamaicans that encircles the grounds of St. Mark’s, her cousin said. It currently includes figures such as sprinter Usain Bolt and Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, who was born in the parish.

But Belnavis, the mayor of St. Ann, said he is thinking bigger — a statue, perhaps, in or near a municipal building if Harris wins the US presidency.

“The murals that you see on the walls eventually will wear away and so on,” he said. “We want something more permanent.”