King Lear as a tragic hero
King Lear as a tragic heroIn a writing of Shakespeare's play "King Lear", the main
character is King Lear who starts off as a respected and powerful
king. As the story progresses the king loses his power because of his
own stupidity and blindness. The tragedy of this play is shown through
the daughters of the king, the fool, and finally when Lear's sanity is
tested. At the beginning of the play, King Lear is powerful and harsh.
He decides he doesn't want to be king anymore, and so he asks his
daughters, Reagan, Goneril, and Cordelia to tell him how much they
love him. He does this so he may give them a dowry to be married with.
First, Goneril begins to tell her father how much she adores him and
would never disrespect him, this is a lie. Next, is the daughter
Reagan, she does the same as her sister and lies to the king saying
that she loves him with all of her heart. Finally, Cordelia tells her
father that she could not tell him how much she loves him, because she
had no words. The king was very upset with Cordelia and because of his
madness towards Cordelia thinking that she did not love him as much as
her other sisters, he divided the land in two and gave Reagan and
Goneril each half. Cordelia on the other hand received nothing as her
dowry and in turn no none would marry her except the King of France.
Giving the land to the two daughters was the first of Lear's mistakes,
for the daughters did not love him as much as Cordelia did, but they
wished to have his riches. When Goneril and Reagan are in power
they try to make Lear appear to be incompetent. They refer to him as
"The Idle Old Man" in front of everyone and start to make even Lear
think less of himself. Although the two sisters do this they also
realize that Lear still holds a great deal of power in their areas, so
they decided something must be done about it. The "loving" daughters
command Lear to let go fifty of his one hundred servicemen, saying
that they will not pay for it and...
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