Blindness In King Lear Essay

Love is an inherently powerful emotion. It is consuming, influential, and passionate. It can also easily blur one’s morals and judgments. Because of this, love is often time used as a shortcoming for characters in tragic literary works. In the play King Lear, Shakespeare utilizes the theme of blindness in the beginning as a metaphor for the “blindness” Lear and Gloucester have regarding their children, and then uses it as a crux for Gloucester when the nobleman goes from being metaphorically blind to having his eyes physically gouged out. Additionally, the progression throughout the play of metaphorical to literal blindness also encompasses Lear’s gradual slip into insanity as a direct result of his own metaphorical blindness. Over the course …show more content…
Blindness is a reoccurring theme that has been used in numerous literary works throughout history. In many such works, “blindness is synonymous with ignorance… [and] aesthetic qualities are perceived by exclusively visual means” (Bolt 93). Because of the assumption that “blindness is associated with lack of knowledge,” many characters who either begin stories blind or become blind over the course of the story are viewed as lesser people (Linett 28). Often times, stories featuring blind characters “show no life after blindness, offer no hope to the blind except that the condition might prove impermanent or that death might come quick” (Linett 27). This hopelessness that is commonly associated with blindness is extremely prevalent throughout King Lear. Consequently, for Lear and Gloucester because “blindness as something that “inverts, perverts, or thwarts all human relationships,”” the blindness that they experience directly correlates to the dissolution of their relationships with their children (Linett 28). Additionally, many literary uses of blindness “features blindness as a consequence”