King Lear Research Paper

In Shakespeare’s King Lear, a tragic ending has been shown. The main character, Lear, as a king of a kingdom, he experiences lots of disasters in his life after he retires and divides the country to his two ungrateful daughters, Goneril and Regan. He begins to think that he is a poor man and a victim who suffers the great attack from his daughters and the people lives around him. He gets hurt from betrayed by his daughters and the people also do not show their respect to him as well. It seems like that the people who live around the Lear caused him to have a miserable life. However, Lear does not discover that all the unfortunate situation he suffers in his afterlife are mainly caused by himself. These three shortcomings of Lear are the main

Lear’s sense of vanity is also a factor to cause him made irreparable mistakes in his life. The “Love Test” that Lear comes up with at the beginning of the play significantly shows Lear’s feeling of pride in his mind. In the play, Shakespeare writes the desire of Lear to listen to his daughters’ love, “Tell me, my daughters. Since now we will divest us both of rule, Interest of territory, cares of state. Which of you shall we say doth love us most, That we our largest bounty may extend. Where nature doth with merit challenge” (1.1.48-53). He demands her daughters to express their love to him in public, which makes him be satisfied in these sweet languages. He also uses this way to judges which daughter loves him most in order to decide how much land he can give to each daughter. It’s serious mistake to measure the love in few sentences. Love is an abstract thing, which is not able to compete by saying the sweet

The most serious wrongful decision he made is to separating his power and responsibility by divide the kingdom to Goneril and Regan. The troubling situation has been caused by this decision, “Lear’s intent to abdicate the throne, as well as his intent to divide up his kingdom, is unconventional and somewhat troubling” (qtd. in Roberts, 101). This decision caused him to lose all the power and authority. He even has naive thoughts that he can still have king’s authority to control the things after he passes his power to his daughters. He just thinks about his blissful retired life, but he never thinks about that Goneril and Regan does not want to look after him when they gain the authorities and will use the power to treat him coolly. In addition, Lear not only loses his power, but also lose a daughter who is loyal to him. The decision that he made to banish his youngest daughter, Cordelia, is the most fatuous one. For the answer of the loving-test, Cordelia is honest to express her true love to her father, which does not sound as sweet as Goneril and Regan do. Lear becomes heartless to drives out Cordelia, “Shakespeare portrays a play-world in which gratuitous violence seems to be a norm. It begins with Lear's outbursts against Cordelia and Kent in the opening scene, in which he invokes the idea of barbarity and cannibalism