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King Lear Paper #1

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Submitted By japagan
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Pages 6
Jasmine Pagan
Dr. Amy C. Reeves
Survey of World Literature
February 7, 2013
Paper #1

I am writing a paper on King Lear, focusing on the main reason for his “fall” in the play. King Lear falls for power, so what is the reason for it? Does Lear end up deserving his fate? Or is he just blind to what is going on around him? Lear was a high respected aging king of British. He had three daughters, Goneril, Regan and Codelia, who he is dividing the kingdom into before he passes. Before he does so, he wanted to put in daughters through a test. He wants to know how much his daughters love him the most and which one would be great to take his place when the time comes. So he asks all his daughters how much they love him. Both Goneril and Regan, (which are his older daughters) lie to him. They tell King Lear that they love him more than anything and that they would be great to take over the kingdom in due time. He waits to hear from his youngest daughter, Cordelia (which is his favorite daughter), she is quiet at first then tells him she loves him like a regular daughter should love her father. “Nothing more; nothing less” she says.
At that point King Lear becomes very angry, disappointed and immediately disowns Cordelia at sight because she did not say what Lear expected to hear from her. Deep down, King Lear was crushed and upset. He loved Cordelia very much, that was his favorite daughter out of them all. So when she told him that she loved him regular, at that moment he felt let down and started changing his moods and the person he was. I can understand where his anger came from in the play because I can only image having someone you loved as your favorite daughter for years just telling you “I love you, but its regular love, not no big or small love” that could really hurt someone feelings and make them turn their back on you. So when Cordelia told her father that, he immediately came to the conclusion that he had nothing else to lose. He disowned her and kicks her out of the kingdom for good.
Meanwhile, Goneril and Regan take over and start making new rules and decisions for the kingdom. After a while Lear’s older daughters, Goneril, betray him, kick him out and Lear is left alone feeling lonely, betrayed and learning that he made a huge mistake by pushing Cordelia away and letting Goneril and Regan take over. King Lear starts to go nearly insane at that point. He has no one to talk to or turn to, he’s left alone outside and a big storm is coming. All he wanted was his favorite daughter to say that she loved him more than the other sisters said they did so that they could be happy, but he felt like when he needed Cordelia the most, she was not there for him, she let him down. Kent felt like Lear was making a huge mistake and he did not care what Lear did to him in the end but he was going to speak up. Lear ended up getting mad at Kent and tells him to “shut up”. By this time Lear already has his mind made up and gets mad at Kent. While Kent is desperately trying to tell Lear that he is acting crazy and is making an unfair decision. So Lear tells Kent to get out of England and that if he sees him there again he will have him killed. But Kent never leaves the country, instead Kent makes himself look like a poor man and ends up asking Lear to be his server. Lear accepts his offer. Once the mean sisters are in charge of the kingdom, they start being very rude to Lear, treating him as if he is not king anymore.
Goneril tells one of her servants, Oswald, that she is tired of Lear and his nights being at her house and that Oswald should make sure that everyone gives Lear bad service. Oswald then starts acting mean and rude towards Lear, turning his back and walking away when Lear calls him. He also started treating Lear less of a king and looking at him just as Goneril’s father. Goneril later confronts Lear, telling him that his followers are unreeling. She dismisses 50 of his followers without even telling Lear. This makes Lear even madder. Lear was expecting to still be treated like a king, but he wasn’t. He was very upset by the way his daughters were treating him.
Kent and Oswald get into a fight and Oswald puts Kent into a stock, to sit outside all day and all night. Lear was very upset when he found Kent tired up, he was even madder when he found out that his daughters were avoiding him. The two mean daughters tell Lear that he cannot keep any servers. Lear starts crying, he gets so angry that he is losing his mind.
Cordelia really wants Lear to be king again, so she set up an army so they can be on Lear’s side. Meanwhile, Cornwall ends up getting into an argument with Gloucester and gashes his eye ball out. He tells him that he hates him and that he realized that he was being tricked this whole time. One of Cornwall’s servers tries to stop him, but hurts Cornwall with a sword before he kills him.
The mean sisters start fighting over which one gets to marry Edmund. Regan later gets starts sick and dies because Goneril has poisoned her. Then Goneril later runs off after being exposed for the letter and kills herself. Before Edmund dies, he decides that he wants to do something good. So he tells his followers to go out and find Lear and Cordelia, but it is too late. Lear found Cordelia dead, and Lear is destroyed. Kent tries to tell Lear that he was a loyal server, but Lear has lost his mind again and doesn’t understand. Lear ends up dying as well and Kent says he plans to join him.
King Lear play was a very dramatic play. I ask myself if he never would have questioned his daughters love would he have died along with all of his daughters. I think that a lot of things just got out of control and when Goneril got jealous of Regan and killed her that could have also been controlled but towards the end of the play it just got crazy. I do believe that in the play King Lear falls for power because he asks his daughters which one loves him the most and that was a stupid thing. I do blame Goneril and Regan as a part of his fall as well, because if the sisters would have been honesty in the beginning and not have exaggerated the truth, Lear would not have looked at Cordelia love for him in such a bad way. I also think it was not fair that Goneril and Regan got Lear’s hopes up high, making him think that they really loved him and soon kicked him out when they got the chance.
Lear’s biggest mistake was thinking that his daughter all loved him the same. If he knew that Cordelia loved him and that she was his favorite, he should have left it at that and not even questioned the other two. I think that Lear was blind to the situation because he was looking for the wrong thing out of his daughters. I think that Lear definitely could have gone about his decision in a different way other than asking his daughters who loved him the most. He was just not thinking fair and ended up having hell to pay in the end. Overall, I do think that Lear deserves his fate, because he should not have questioned his daughters love and he should have not expected Goneril and Regan to be like Cordelia. I think he just expected too much out of his daughters. In the end, if Lear would not have been so foolish to begin with, he could have avoided his fate and the others that were hurt along with him.

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