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How Does King Lear Affect Society

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Imagine gushing blood from eyes being gouged out of one’s head, poisoning one’s own sister, fathers turning their backs on their own sons? These are some of the horrible outcomes of a few characters in Shakespeare’s play, King Lear. They are rapidly thrown into a world of strife. King Lear’s most favored daughter, Cordelia, has been driven away by Lear himself, not to mention Gloucester is betrayed by his bastard son, Edmund. Then Lear is sent out into a storm by his two older and selfish daughters. The list just flows on. But what is it that causes these pathetic consequences? The answer is the impact that society has taken on these individuals.
By reading some of Shakespeare’s previous work, it is almost no surprise that there will be tragedy …show more content…
With Lear dividing his kingdom between his three daughters depending upon their love for him as a father and having his youngest daughter refuse to declare her love for him in false announcement, the result is the tragic mistake of giving his land to his two mischievous older daughters. As the play goes on, the plot ends with the two sisters only making Lear go mad and setting forth his inevitable death. Facing the nature of the storm, Lear finally notices his own misfortune when he says “Thou think’st ‘tis much that this contentious storm invades us to the skin… When the mind’s free, the body’s delicate. The tempest in my mind doth from my senses take all feeling else save what beats there. Filial ingratitude! Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand for lifting food to ‘t… In such a night to shut me out! Pour on; I will endure. In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril! Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all. O, that way madness lies; let me shun that; no more of that” (King Lear 3.4 7-23). With Lear’s madness getting the best of him, this creates …show more content…
By challenging the rules of inheritance between his father and the legitimate son Edgar, Edmund faces death directly from the person whom he has tried to destroy. Edgar blames Edmund for being a traitor, “Thy valor and thy heart, thou art a traitor; false to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father,” so Edmund confesses to the wrong he has done (5.3 133-134). When Edmund dies, it is as though the play takes a direction forward and grants the

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