By facilitating the growth of evil within William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Lear, it is evident that the tragedy’s protagonist, King Lear can be held accountable for his own victimization and ultimate downfall. The most notable aspects of this self-induced victimization include Lear’s own lack of practical wisdom and divergence from the natural order, combined with the failure to recognize fatherhood and kingship, that enables Lear as a tragic hero to create the framework in which the ulterior motives of others, such as his daughters, Goneril and Regan, are able to flourish. Hence, Lear himself, is emphatically both an agent and a victim of the forces of evil “more sinned against than sinning.” This notion is further reinforced by critical
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By doing so, Lear inadvertently created the necessary conditions for which the root of Goneril and Regan’s evil were able to healthily flourish and grow beyond controllable bounds in which Lear acknowledges: ‘But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter;/ Or rather a disease that’s in my flesh,/ Which I must needs call mine’ (2.4. 214-216). Wherein, the utilization of disease imagery emphasizes that Lear is metaphorically the host of Goneril and Regan’s evil, in which he is unable to control nor grasp. Lear yet again comes to this realization in the midst of his madness of Act 3, further establishing the responsibility he had in the evil of his daughters : ‘Judicious punishment! ‘twas the flesh begot/ Those pelican daughters.’ (3.4.69-70) Shakespeare’s employment of animal imagery in Lear’s outburst, ironically alludes to the behavioral parallels of Lear reflected within his daughters. Whereby, pelicans are generally characterized by their destructive, greedy like nature - a trait that can be exhibited in both Lear and his daughters at the outset of the play. As Lear’s ego substitutes the quality of Cordelia words for the quantity of Goneril and Regan’s, equating one’s …show more content…
Kingship was a divinely instituted position, authorized by the king’s purpose to sustain the health and growth of the body politic – his kingdom. In the giving away of his kingdom, Lear ultimately stepped beyond his boundaries as a king, in what Ribner described as, choosing the lesser finite good of power without responsibility as oppose to the greater infinite good of God 's order, which decrees that the king rule for the good of his people until God relieves him of his responsibility by death. In addition to this, Lear 's abdication and division of the kingdom would have been regarded by a Jacobean audience with a horror difficult for a modern audience to appreciate for these acts were a violation of the king 's responsibility to God and his people. Therefore, the division of the kingdom was Lear’s first qualitative step beyond the confines of God’s intended order, wherein he inadvertently facilitated the growth and expansion of Goneril and Regan’s ulterior motive to ultimately debase him to nothingness without the guaranteed political and economic security of the title of king. Wherein, Lear’s gradual transformation from once a powerful king to a man of nothing can be attributed to that of
By doing so, Lear inadvertently created the necessary conditions for which the root of Goneril and Regan’s evil were able to healthily flourish and grow beyond controllable bounds in which Lear acknowledges: ‘But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter;/ Or rather a disease that’s in my flesh,/ Which I must needs call mine’ (2.4. 214-216). Wherein, the utilization of disease imagery emphasizes that Lear is metaphorically the host of Goneril and Regan’s evil, in which he is unable to control nor grasp. Lear yet again comes to this realization in the midst of his madness of Act 3, further establishing the responsibility he had in the evil of his daughters : ‘Judicious punishment! ‘twas the flesh begot/ Those pelican daughters.’ (3.4.69-70) Shakespeare’s employment of animal imagery in Lear’s outburst, ironically alludes to the behavioral parallels of Lear reflected within his daughters. Whereby, pelicans are generally characterized by their destructive, greedy like nature - a trait that can be exhibited in both Lear and his daughters at the outset of the play. As Lear’s ego substitutes the quality of Cordelia words for the quantity of Goneril and Regan’s, equating one’s …show more content…
Kingship was a divinely instituted position, authorized by the king’s purpose to sustain the health and growth of the body politic – his kingdom. In the giving away of his kingdom, Lear ultimately stepped beyond his boundaries as a king, in what Ribner described as, choosing the lesser finite good of power without responsibility as oppose to the greater infinite good of God 's order, which decrees that the king rule for the good of his people until God relieves him of his responsibility by death. In addition to this, Lear 's abdication and division of the kingdom would have been regarded by a Jacobean audience with a horror difficult for a modern audience to appreciate for these acts were a violation of the king 's responsibility to God and his people. Therefore, the division of the kingdom was Lear’s first qualitative step beyond the confines of God’s intended order, wherein he inadvertently facilitated the growth and expansion of Goneril and Regan’s ulterior motive to ultimately debase him to nothingness without the guaranteed political and economic security of the title of king. Wherein, Lear’s gradual transformation from once a powerful king to a man of nothing can be attributed to that of