AKSHAYA ANISHKUMAR LEC052005 CRITICALLY EXAMINE THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MADNESS IN KING LEAR
Akshaya Anishkumar
LECO52005
Dr. Joseph Koyipally
Academic Writing
MACEL I
CRITICALLY
ANALYSE THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MADNESS IN KINGLEAR
King Lear stands like
the center for Shakespeare’s achievement of his great imagination. This great
tragedy moves in our great imagination between a royal palace and a hovel on
bare earth. King Lear is larger than other tragedies in its moral scope. it is a play of good and evil, a parable with little psychology of character. According to Samuel Johnson, among the tragedies of Shakespeare King Lear is the play that is celebrated mostly among the people. "The tragedy of Lear's is deservedly celebrated among the dramas of Shakespeare. there is perhaps no play which keeps the attention so strongly fixed" (Johnson 37).
It begins like a fairy tale: the old king asks his three daughters to say who loves him the most. His youngest, Cordelia, loves him but is not prepared to outbid her sisters to gain a richer portion of the kingdom. The subplot also has a fairytale ending, in which the good brother Edgar defeats the evil brother Edmund in single combat. Virtue triumphs here but not the main plot.
Its emotional range
extends from the extreme violent anger to the insanity in the later part of the
drama. The play powerfully registers the anguish of the suffering Brought about
by the inhumanity of man. All the night when Lear moves out of Goneril’s house,
Lear is caught up by madness. The fool also says that “The cold night will turn
us all to fools and mad men (3.4 77)”. The mighty ruler of a kingdom wanders in a dreadful night begging for a shelter from his unkind daughters. We can clearly see his mind fluttering and moving to complete madness. This is the point where the tragic hero suffer misery due to his wrong choice.
The tragic hero will most effectively evoke both our pity and terror if he is neither thoroughly good nor thoroughly bad but a mixture of both, and also that this tragic effect will be stronger if the hero is better then we are, in the sense that he is of higher than ordinary moral worth. Such a man is exhibited as suffering a change in fortune from happiness to misery because of his mistaken choice of an action, to which he is lead by his hamartia. (Abrams 405)
As Lear is trapped in
the storm he begins his descent into madness. The betrayal of Lear’s daughters
and the loss of his sense of self, literally drove him crazy. Madness is chaos
and Lear is himself in the middle of it. The theme of madness allowing for self-discovery
remains constant throughout the play. E are able to sense the madness in Lear
through some of his dialogues. In the hovel he pretend to be the King, defeated
by madness, “I here take my oath before this honorable assembly, she kicked the
poor king, her father (3.4 46-47)”.
We are able to see the shift of personality in Edgar also. But Edgar does it on purpose but the king have completely lost his senses. Stripped of his identity like Lear, Edgar adopts "the barest and poorest shape / that ever penury, in contempt of man" (2.3 7-8). After Lear had lost his senses the mortified Lear knelt to pray for the poor naked wretches. Thou wert better in a grave” says the houseless king to the houseless beggar, “Than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies:
Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou ow’st the wormno silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha?here’s three on ’s are sophisticated. Thou art the thing itself:unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, fork’danimal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings! Come, unbutton here.(3.4.101-9)
Lear himself also finds glimmers of self-awareness when
talking to the fool. It is to the fool that lear speaks about the fears that he
is sliding into madness: “o, let me not mad not mad, sweet heaven./ keep me in
temper, I would not be mad!”(1.5 46-47). Lear has no soliloquies, no moments to
reflect privately on his state of mind and on the action of the play. Fool provides
a means for Lear to use a more intimate and unguarded voice. By interacting
with Lear the fool helps to calibrate both the emotional confusion of the king
and the growing madness of the court.
Lear’s suffering has led him to compassion and an
understanding of the human needs he had formerly ignored. Lear has been on the
borders of madness. His extreme impulsiveness has been of no avail. He is not
able to overcome the resistance of other equally determined. The inability to
perceive a clear path of duty and he sense of foolish failure just seek his
brain.
WORKS CITED
Johnson, Samuel, and W. K. Wimsatt. On Shakespeare. Penguin, 1969, sapili, www.sapili.org/livros/en/gu005429.pdf.
Very good writing. You have gone through some nice resources.
ReplyDeleteYour thesis statement is found only in the third paragraph. And there are some fond differences, especially in MH Abram's quoting. I'm afraid it was too lengthy, with seven content paragraphs and two quoted paragraphs.
Good writing. Your Abram's quotation is little bit different , it's too lengthy . And in the first para , (Johnson37 ) after full stop you should use Capital letter.
ReplyDeleteThe essay is written well. At places there are capitalization errors and the font style used to quote M. H. Abrams is different.
ReplyDeleteGood research has been done on the topic but the thesis statement is not clear in the introductory paragraph. The in-text citations of the quotes from the play are not according to the MLA format. The quote from M H Abrams was a different font size and was unnecessarily italicised. In the in-text citation of Johnson, only page number is required as his name has been mentioned in the sentence. There are some capitalisation errors and grammatical mistakes. There is some typo in the 3rd line of the 4th para. In the works cited, M H Abram citation has some variations from the MLA style.
ReplyDeleteEssay is informative and good. But there are some punctuation errors like proper capitalization in certain sentences is missing. MLA style is not strictly followed, like font differences are found and the work's name (King Lear) is not italicized.
ReplyDeleteGood writing and well researched.The quotations could have been avoided in the introductory paragraph.And felt like quotations was way too much and some seemed redundant.
ReplyDeleteThe essay is informative and well-written. MLA style is not strictly followed in citations. In the title, only the first letter of the content words should have been capitalized and the title need not be underlined. The title of the play, King Lear should have been italicized. Some capitalization errors and punctuation problems are found in the essay. There is no need to change the font and font size while quoting from the sources. Good research is done on the topic and it is evident in the essay.
ReplyDeleteThe essay is well-written and come across with some fine resources. The topic sentences were not that focused on the content also there is some font changes in the quoting.
ReplyDeleteYou have good language and vocabulary but needs to pay more attention to your grammar part. Paragraphs need a better topic sentence to highlight your arguments. Ambiguity in the starting sentence. The introductory part missed out to mention the thesis, hypothesis or the supportive arguments. Second paragraph was isolated from other paragraphs in terms of coherence. The third paragraph begins without clearly mentioning the subject of the sentence. Unnecessary capitalization of “Brought” in second line of third paragraph.Third line of the same paragraph needs to be rewritten for clarity. Requires comma after “that” in the fouth line and incomplete intext citation in the same line. Deviation from the MLA font size and unnecessary italicization in the quotation. Incorrect MLA citation for MH Abrahams text. Missing open quotation marks in the fifth paragraph and intext citation is not given for the same.I could also find a quotation mark after your third citation mark that needs to be avoided. You have good language and vocabulary but needs to pay more attention to your grammar part. Paragraphs need a better topic sentence to highlight your arguments.Good attempt Akshaya. Make sure you don’t deviate from the thesis.
ReplyDelete