Some say it is hard to find your true self. That one can only find sanity after they have gone insane. In Shakespeare’s King Lear many of the characters, Lear included, find they fall into insanity due to circumstances that were unjust. The only way for Lear to realize who he truly was, was for him to enter a state of insanity, and emerge from it with knowledge of self.
Madness is a state of severe mental illness, a behavior or thinking that is very foolish or dangerous, according to Webster. Lear is in a state of insanity brought on by his loved ones, and himself. In the beginning of the play when they tell Lear how they feel, he divides up the kingdom and gives them both a peace. During this scene we see that Lear is insecure due to the public proclamations, because he wants to feel loved. Even his daughters Goneril and Regan notice that their father “hath ever but/ slenderly known himself” (1. 1. 282-283). Seeing this they falsely put him up to keep his head in the sky. It is when his daughter Cordellia …show more content…
Off, off, you lendings! Come on, be true.” (3. 4. 112-115) In this crucial passage, Lear has an epiphany. Not only has he become capable of selflessness, but he finally calls upon himself to be true and unhindered by these “lendings,” symbolic of the persona he has been so absorbed by. He arrives at this threshold even as the storm, both inside and outside of his mind, begins to break him physically and mentally, and the overwhelming emotional exhaustion seems only to further his understanding. Knight eloquently calls this stage “the rush of madness for this crescendo of silent beauty, a sudden blaze of light.”[11] Bursting out of Plato’s cave, into the sunlight, Lear is no longer a shadow, for he desires at last to be “the thing
Madness is a state of severe mental illness, a behavior or thinking that is very foolish or dangerous, according to Webster. Lear is in a state of insanity brought on by his loved ones, and himself. In the beginning of the play when they tell Lear how they feel, he divides up the kingdom and gives them both a peace. During this scene we see that Lear is insecure due to the public proclamations, because he wants to feel loved. Even his daughters Goneril and Regan notice that their father “hath ever but/ slenderly known himself” (1. 1. 282-283). Seeing this they falsely put him up to keep his head in the sky. It is when his daughter Cordellia …show more content…
Off, off, you lendings! Come on, be true.” (3. 4. 112-115) In this crucial passage, Lear has an epiphany. Not only has he become capable of selflessness, but he finally calls upon himself to be true and unhindered by these “lendings,” symbolic of the persona he has been so absorbed by. He arrives at this threshold even as the storm, both inside and outside of his mind, begins to break him physically and mentally, and the overwhelming emotional exhaustion seems only to further his understanding. Knight eloquently calls this stage “the rush of madness for this crescendo of silent beauty, a sudden blaze of light.”[11] Bursting out of Plato’s cave, into the sunlight, Lear is no longer a shadow, for he desires at last to be “the thing