King Lear

Analysis of Major Characters

King Lear

The aging king of Britain and the protagonist of the play. Lear is used to enjoying absolute power and to being flattered, and he does not respond well to being contradicted or challenged. He wants to be treated as a king and to enjoy the title, but he doesn't want to fulfil a king's obligations of governing for the good of his subjects. Lear's basic flaw at the beginning of the play is that he values appearances above reality. Similarly, his test of his daughters demonstrates that he values a flattering public display of love over real love. He doesn't ask "which of you doth love us most," but rather, "which of you shall we say doth love us most?" (I.i. ). Most readers conclude that Lear is simply blind to the truth, infact he values Goneril and Regan's fawning over Cordelia's sincere sense of filial duty.

An important question is whether Lear develops as a character - whether he learns from his mistakes and becomes a better and more insightful human being. He doesn't completely recover his sanity and emerge as a better king. But his values do change over the course of the play. As he realizes his weakness and insignificance in comparison to the awesome forces of the natural world, he becomes a humble and caring individual. He comes to cherish Cordelia above everything else and to place his own love for Cordelia above every other consideration, to the point that he would rather live in prison with her than rule as a king again.

Cordelia

Lear's youngest and most beloved daughter. Cordelia's chief characteristics are devotion, kindness, beauty, and honesty-honesty as a fault. At the beginning of the play, infact, with her honesty and sincerity, Cordelia establishes herself as a repository of virtue and it is this virtue that brings her to die. For most of the middle section of the play, she is offstage, but as we observe the depredations of Goneril and Regan and watch Lear's descent into madness, Cordelia is never far from the audience's thoughts, and her beauty is venerably described in religious terms. Indeed, rumours of her return to Britain begin to surface almost immediately, and once she lands at Dover, the action of the play begins to move toward her, as all the characters converge on the coast. Cordelia's reunion with Lear marks the apparent restoration of order in the kingdom and the triumph of love and forgiveness over hatred and spite. This fleeting moment of familial happiness makes Cordelia, the personification of virtue, a literal sacrifice to the cruelty of an apparently unjust world.

Edmund

Of all of the play's villains, Edmund is the most complex. He isn't a real Machiavellian character because his ambition reflects not only a thirst for land and power but also a desire for the respect denied to him by his status as a bastard. His serial treachery is not merely self-interested; it is a conscious rebellion against the social order that has denied him the same status as Gloucester's legitimate son, Edgar. However, he always is in accordance with the figure of a cold and capable villain who enjoy watch himself work. Only at the close of the play mortally wounded, whispering "Yet Edmund was beloved" (V.iii. ), he seems to repent of his villainy and admits to having ordered Cordelia's death. His peculiar change of heart, rare among Shakespearean villains, is enough to make the audience wonder, whether Edmund's villainy sprang not from some innate cruelty but simply from a thwarted, misdirected desire for the familial love that he witnessed around him.

Goneril and Regan

The two other Lear's daughters, indistinguishable in their villainy and spite. Goneril and Regan are clever and, in a sense, personifications of evil - they have no conscience, only appetite. It is this greedy ambition that enables them to crush all opposition and make themselves mistresses of Britain. Ultimately, however, this same appetite brings about their ruin. Their desire for power is satisfied, but their desire for Edmund, which destroys their alliance and eventually leads them to destroy each other. Evil, the play suggests, inevitably turns in on itself.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Justice

King Lear is a brutal play, filled with human cruelty. The play's succession of terrible events raises an obvious question for the characters - whether there is any possibility of justice in the world, or whether the world is fundamentally indifferent or even hostile to humankind. Various characters offer their opinions: "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; / They kill us for their sport," Gloucester muses, realizing it foolish for humankind to assume that the natural world works in parallel with socially or morally convenient notions of justice (IV.i. ). Edgar, on the other hand, insists that "the gods are just," believing that individuals get what they deserve (V.iii. ). But, in the end, we are left with only a terrifying uncertainty-although the wicked die, the good die along with them, culminating in the awful image of Lear cradling Cordelia's body in his arms. There is goodness in the world of the play, but there is also madness and death, and it is difficult to tell which triumphs in the end.

Authority versus Chaos

Lear is not only a father but also a king, and when he gives away his authority to the unworthy and evil Goneril and Regan, he delivers not only himself and his family but all of Britain into chaos and cruelty. Lear has destroyed not only his own authority but all authority in Britain. The hierarchal order that Lear initially represents falls apart and disorder engulfs the realm. The failure of authority in the face of chaos recurs in Lear's wanderings on the heath during the storm. Lear comes to understand that he, like the rest of humankind, is insignificant in the world and this newfound understanding of himself enable Lear confront the chaos in the political realm. This reveals that authority need to be humble to control the chaos.

Reconciliation

Lear learns a tremendously cruel lesson in humility and eventually reaches the point where he can reunite joyfully with Cordelia and experience the relief of her forgiving love. Lear's recognition of the error of his ways is an ingredient vital to reconciliation with Cordelia, not because Cordelia feels wronged by him but because he has understood the sincerity and depth of her love for him. His maturation enables him to bring Cordelia back into his good graces, a testament to love's ability to flourish, even if only fleetingly, amid the horror and chaos that engulf the rest of the play.

Motifs

Madness

Insanity occupies a central place in the play and is associated with both disorder and hidden wisdom. The Fool, who offers Lear insight in the early sections of the play, offers his counsel in a seemingly mad talk. Later, when Lear himself goes mad, the turmoil in his mind mirrors the chaos that has descended upon his kingdom. At the same time, however, it also provides him with important wisdom by reducing him to his bare humanity, stripped of all royal pretensions. Lear thus learns humility. He is joined in his real madness by Edgar's feigned insanity, which also contains nuggets of wisdom for the king to mine. Meanwhile, Edgar's time as a supposedly insane beggar hardens him and prepares him to defeat Edmund at the close of the play.

Betrayal

Betrayals play a critical role in the play: here, brothers betray brothers and children betray fathers. Goneril and Regan's betrayal of Lear raises them to power in Britain, where Edmund, who has betrayed both Edgar and Gloucester, joins them. However, the play suggests that betrayers inevitably turn on one another, showing how Goneril and Regan fall out when they both become attracted to Edmund, and how their jealousies of one another ultimately lead to mutual destruction.

Symbols

The Storm

The storm echoes Lear's inner turmoil and mounting madness: it is a physical, turbulent natural reflection of Lear's internal confusion. At the same time, the storm embodies the awesome power of nature, which forces the powerless king to recognize his own mortality and human frailty and to cultivate a sense of humility for the first time. Finally, the meteorological chaos also symbolizes the political disarray that has engulfed Lear's Britain.

Blindness

Gloucester's physical blindness symbolizes the metaphorical blindness that grips both Gloucester and the play's other father figure, Lear. The parallels between the two men are clear: both have loyal children and disloyal children, both are blind to the truth, and both end up banishing the loyal children and making the wicked one(s) their heir(s). Only when Gloucester has lost the use of his eyes and Lear has gone mad does each realize his tremendous error. It is appropriate that the play brings them together near Dover in Act IV to commiserate about how their blindness to the truth about their children has cost them dearly.