So although the big question is whether or not everything that happens after Lear splits up his kingdom, is Lear’s fault, I think an interesting thing to note is something that William brought up today during our class discussion. For us, as outsiders of this chaos, who get view everything that happens from a kind of third person omniscient point of view (through all the characters’ soliloquies and secret talks/letters between each other that let us understand the characters’ true natures ), it’s easy for us to say “Oh Lear should have known better than to let go of all his power” or “Lear should have known his own two elder daughters were only after his power and didn’t truly love him” or “Lear should have done this” or “should have done that.” But in reality, if we put ourselves in Lear’s shoes, during that time period, that place, that royal class culture (especially since he was “the almighty King”), if we really view the situation from Lear’s perspective, it becomes clear that he probably was not able to make the logical decisions he should have made because:
1) he didn’t have all the information that we know now about the nature of the people around him and
2) his tragic flaw (?) of seeking evidence of love in words rather than actions
In other words, we’re probably unintentionally suffering from what we call in psychology as hindsight bias, or the tendency to believe, after learning about the outcome, that we should have foreseen it and thus prevented it from happening beforehand.
In reality because Lear was not only a father but more importantly, also the King, it’s likely that he wasn’t able to spend much time personally raising his children; and even if he did do that (we don’t know after all) I feel like his high position and power as King may have caused a distance to grow between Lear and his daughters, and caused, at least Goneril and Reagan, to see him merely as a King who they should pretend to respect because he has the power and wealth they want, rather than a father who just wants his daughters to love and take care of him. Speaking of Goneril & Reagan versus Cordelia, I was just wondering how they ended up with such differing attitudes even though they were all Lear’s daughters—perhaps it just depends on the individual? Because Goneril & Reagan (& Edmund too) were so obsessed with obtaining power, they lost all touch with their basic human morals and simply ruthless power-hungry creatures.
Speaking of the animal imagery that Shakespeare uses, since we didn’t get to talk about it much in class (not until the very end at least), I went back into the play to try to search for more examples of it and found that Edgar actually has many lines of animal imagery—though whether they’re supposed to make sense, or are simply are of his “crazy” homeless beggar man disguise, I’m not sure. For example, in my version of the text in Act 3, Sc. 4, ln. 63, Lear says “The little dogs and all, Tray Blanch, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me.”
Edgar say, “Tom will throw his head at them. Avaunt, you curs! ….” And then he describes all the different types of vicious dogs there are and how he’ll get rid of them in an instant with the sweep of his head. So perhaps the dogs represent Lear’s 3 daughters and Edgar is describing his loyalty and devotion to helping Lear…
No comments:
Post a Comment