Essay on King Lear as a Tragic Herp
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The play of King Lear is a tragedy like many of Shakespeare’s plays, and many of them deal with the tragic hero that end up meeting their demise thanks to their tragic flaw. The tragic hero of this play is King Lear, and he is a man that is a ruler of the kingdom of Britain in the 8th century B.C. He is a very old man surrounded by grave responsibilities, which are taking care of the land and taking care of the citizens of the kingdom. Lear the tragic hero must feel suffering and contrast those good times to the suffering, except his suffering leads to chaos and ultimately his death. The definition of a tragedy from our class notes is, “an honorable protagonist with a tragic flaw, which is also known as a fatal flaw. This eventually leads
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Even when Kent has been disguised as a person who Lear should recognize, his noble qualities shadow his judgment of his truly loyal servant. So Lear being from a family of nobility, contributes to him being a tragic hero and also his tragic flaw of arrogance. King Lear’s tragic flaw is arrogance, which is Lear’s lack of knowledge in certain situations and this was the flaw that ultimately led to Lear’s downfall. The very first thing that Lear does that is badly misjudged, is when he chooses to split up his Kingdom between his daughters just to lose the responsibility of the kingdom but not the glory. This decision is blinded by thinking about himself and not thinking about what will happen if his daughters don’t do a good job of running their part of the kingdom. The next situation where Lear was arrogant occurred when he disliked Cordelia’s heartfelt speech about her love being half with him and half with her husband, who is the King of France. As a response Lear becomes enraged and does not see the truthfulness that his youngest daughter is