Symbols and Motifs in King Lear

The issue of sightlessness is associated most obviously with Gloucester, who is blinded in the course of the look. It is peculiarly right for Gloucesters eyes to be the organs by mean of with(predicate) which he is tortured. Gloucester model he apothegm the rightfulness ab unwrap his sons, only was in fact blind. With his eyes put out(p) he does indeed see the truth. Gloucester so atomic number 53r he lost his eyes was spiritu entirelyy blind, and could non tell the difference betwixt a good son and a bad (Muir, lx). It is this physical suffering that brings out the long debilitated moral toughness that has underlain his sympathy. Losing his eyes enables him to reach heroic and sad proportions. He surely has the right to say, both phantom and comfortless (III, vii, 84). There is no irritating shadow of egotism on his accounts of his predicament. And when he learns that Edmund has branded him, his response is astonishing and wondrous O my follies Then Edgar was abus ed. / Kind gods, release me that and prosper him (III, vii, 90-1). He knows that his injury to Edgar pile never be forgivenYou cannot see your musical mode.I nominate no management, and in that locationfore want no eyesI stumbled when I motto.(IV, i, 17-19).Gloucesters blindness is also a reflection of the unreformed Lears arrogant rabies, and his inability to tell a good little girl from a bad, until he has been through his take in ordeal.The StormIn III, i, the Gentle hu composition race gives us an account of Lears behaviour which shows him as, in a way, leniency in a sort of representation display, enjoying the spectacle of himself suffering in the encounter. The storm seems to solicitation to Lear as a sort of histrionic setting for a display of what is at this point his martyr- corresponding self-pity. tears his white copper/ Strives in his little world of man to out-storm / The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain (III, i, 6-10). But Lear has not yet reached th e truth about himself. This is pregnant because it is tempting to see the storm as a symbolic event, and Lear as man in the abstract cont odditying with the forces of offensive. Shakespe ar makes us prevail back from Lear still, and not identify with him. The reliable meaning of the storm lies in the thought that it was in benevolently cruel of the daughters to shut him out on much(prenominal) a night.Certainly Kents translation of the peculiar severity of the storm prompts sensation to see it as more(prenominal) than expert a physical event. He has never in his life seen such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder (III, ii, 46) etc., and the implication is that the storm has more than inborn causes. This leads Lear to his reflection on the power of the storm to purge evil and crime Let the Great Gods, / That save up this dreadful pudder oer our heads, / picture out their enemies now (IV, ii, 49-51). His growing lyssa takes the form an obsessive interpretation of tout ensemble(prenominal) ills in terms of his own individual(prenominal) sufferings. Shakespe ar makes sure we see the point this storm in my mind / Doth from my senses take every(prenominal) touching else / Save what beats there (III, iv, 12-14).It is the internal tempest that matters in the drama, and the way it brings Lear to some sort of wisdom. The wildness of the elements leads him to a great advance when he sees Edgar as elemental man. Here authorized truth starts to appear to him Is man no more than this? unaccommodated man is no more nevertheless such a poor, b be, forked sensual as thou art (III, iv, 105-111). He sees, for the first time, beyond the sur suit of things, and under wracks the folly of snobbery and blind selfishness in gentlemans gentleman life. His own trappings of pomp are vain, he sees himself as deluded, and Edgar as the truth.MadnessLears collapse into queasyness is his way to transformation. unrivaled of his mad notions is to imagine the m ock foot race of the sisters. The symbolic force of this is evident(To Edgar) Thou, appareled man of justice, take thy place.(To the Fool) And thou, his yoke fella of equity,Bench by his side. (To Kent) You are othcommissionSit you overly. (III, vi, 37-40).Here is a Christian inversion of the social order a mad beggar, a fool, and an exiled man are set up over the correctly to sit in judgement on them. It is a mad fancy of Lears, but it has a deep significance in the criticism of false sophistication that the play poses. An unjust society has helped Lear to be an egotist and to do evil, as Kent said in the first scene. Now Lear is learning and downslope his own sophistication in the face of Edgar, the thing itself. What he is learning is the film for humility, and respect for others, and the importance of setting ones eyes on the real truths of piece existence if one is to reside fairly and with meaning. The knowledge Lear gains is percolated through his madness.But Glouc ester does not go mad. He endures everything. As he learns from Edgars lesson on the cliff, it is not mans right to adopt his end. The point of that st deviate scene seems to be summarised at the end by Gloucesters description of their relative fatesThe power is mad how stiff is my vile senseThat I stand up, and have ingenious feelingOf my huge sorrows part I were distractSo should my thoughts be severd from my griefs,And woes by violate imaginations loseThe knowledge of themselves. (IV, vi, 28106)I suggest that through him we grasp the central thread, which has to do with whop and suffering and sticking it out to the end Lear is spared the worst. Gloucester gets it (Mason, 1970, p.200).In Lears crazed mind all authority is in the hands of those who are unworthy. It is only their established power, their rank and honoring clothes that distinguish the judges from the accused. moral philosophy is cynically ignored. Only selfishness rules. Let coitus thrive and the world in Le ars distorted mind looks very like that presupposed by Edmunds view of nature, a sort of jungle of expedience, power and lust.BetrayalWhen Cordelia refuses to do what her foolish father wants in the first scene she invokes the idea of the alliance. I dear your majesty / According to my bond (I, i, 92-3) And by bond she means something quite assorted from the bondage that he interprets it as. The question of the bonds of human relationships is central to the play why human beings fail in their bonds, as the daughters do with Lear, and Edmund does with his father is the horrific mystery that Shakespeare cannot solve. Cordelia goes on to spell out, in an embarrassed way she had constantly thought it was obvious what she means by bond.It is the natural range of duties and affection that exist between children and parents. Kent too speaks of another bond, the sacred responsibilities of service. Royal Lear, / Whom I have ever honourd as my King, / Lovd as my father, as my master fol lowd (I, i, 139-141). It is the perfidy of these bonds that causes such chaos in the moral world of King Lear, of which Jan Kott says There is incomplete Christian heaven, nor the heaven predicted by humanists. King Lear makes a tragic mockery of all eschatologies (Kott, 1967, p.116).Edmunds speech in I, ii is plain because his thought is plain. There is no hesitation in him because there are no doubts, and no traces of decent feeling in him at all. He is suddenly conscienceless. Nothing in him works to throw the urge of ruthlessness. His closeness to the sisters is clear. His Nature, it is graceful obvious, is a different concept from that fictive in Cordelias definition of the natural bonds of feeling and duty which underlie decent society. It is, for him, nature as expressed in the law of the jungle naked self-interest and the pursuit of power. He is appalling in his plainness. The sisters are equally ready to betray normal ties. It is astonishing to hear Regans total fail ure to respond to Lears appeals for sympathy. After all, however absurd his selfishness, he is her father. But she responds, as does Goneril, like a machine, with an icy formality of tone which is the verbalise of cold reason.O, Sir you are old,Nature in you stands on the very vergeOf her confine you should be ruld and ledBy some discretion that discerns your stateBetter then you yourself. (II, iv, 147-151).We might be tempted to agree with Bradley that in that dark cold world some dim malignant influence is abroad, turning the police wagon of the fathers against their children and of the children against their fathers (Bradley, 214). But the bonds are not always betrayed. A notable incident in III, vii, the scene in which Gloucester is blinded, is the intervention of the servant. He acts purely on a tender-hearted instinct of decency, knowing in his intelligence that such conduct as Cornwalls is not tolerable in a human world. He invokes the sacred bond of service, just as Ken t did to Lear Hold your hand, my gentle / I have served you ever since I was a child / But break off service have I never done you / Than now to bid you apply (III, vii, 71-4). The point here the infinitely cheery and optimistic point is that this man is not a hero, but simply a decent human being. But he is ready to die in disaffirmation of a tolerable worldWorks CitedBradley, A.C. Shakespearean Tragedy. capital of the United Kingdom Macmillan, Second interlingual rendition, 1905.Kott, Jan, Shakespeare Our Contemporary, translated by Boleslaw Taborski, London, Methuen, 2nd edition 1967.Mason, H.A., Shakespeares Tragedies of Love, London, Chatto and Windus, 1970.Shakespeare, W. The Arden Shakespeare King Lear. Ed. Kenneth Muir. London Methuen, 1980.