Post your Introductory Paragraph (with Thesis) for your King Lear Essay Here

Greetings Shakespeare Scholars:

1.  Please review the essay topics and the sample essay on this blog.

2.  Choose a topic and create an introduction that makes a claim and references examples from different parts of the play that you will use to support your claim.

3.  Follow the model established in Dr Van's sample essay :)

4.  Next Tuesday we will workshop your topics so it is very important that you post them here so we can review them in class!

Sample Essay on King Lear

English 102 Honors Section   Sample Essay on Theme     Dr. Van Slyck/Spring 2013

Nature in King Lear: Friend or Foe?

            The word “nature” appears in almost every scene of Shakespeare’s King Lear.  In Act I almost every character refers to “nature,” usually invoking this concept as something positive, though, ironically, each character uses the idea of nature in a way that contradicts the true or “natural” meaning of “nature.”  Shakespeare, therefore, wants his audience to think about the use and misuse of the idea of nature, and he links his own vision of tragedy to the misunderstanding of nature in the play.  By the end of King Lear, however, all of the characters, especially Lear, come to a new understanding of the true, or most positive, meaning of nature, nature that is capable of forgiveness and of love.

            In Act I, Scene I, Lear invokes nature in demanding that his daughters tell him who “doth love us most” saying he will extend his largest bounty “where nature doth with merit challenge” (1.1. 52-53).  Thus he links what is natural to something that is commercial: he will “pay” the daughter who best describes her love.  Throughout this scene he speaks the language of money, language that is, in fact, at odds with nature.  To Cordelia, he says “What can you say to draw/ A third more opulent than your sisters?” (1.1.84-85).

            Immediately following his third daughter’s refusal to describe her love so as to receive her fortune, a chaotic nature seems to burst forth through Lear’s rage, foreshadowing the storm which will ensue and threaten to destroy the entire kingdom, and revealing the wild and monstrous side of nature when it is uncontrolled by human reason, compassion, love.

            Act I, Scene II opens with Edmund, Gloucester’s bastard son, invoking nature as his “goddess.”  Edmund’s purpose is to take the idea of nature and make it conform to his need to be legitimate, even as he dismisses the idea of legitimacy.  Gloucester’s illegitimate son defines nature as something that can be molded to his own private purpose.  The main difference between Edmund’s and Lear’s faulty reasoning about nature is that Edmund’s purpose is deliberately evil: he seeks to displace Edgar, the legitimate son, and punish his father for the latter’s condescending treatment of him as a bastard.  Edmund’s idea of nature is, therefore, part of the wild, uncontrolled nature that has been unleashed in the opening of the play by Lear: he seeks to destroy his family for personal gain.  We see that he is successful when Gloucester, after reading the false letter from Edgar, is convinced of his legitimate son’s treachery.  He immediately refers to Edgar as an “unnatural, detested, brutish villain” (I.2.73). Edmund, for his part, has nothing but contempt for his brother Edgar’s naivete, almost gleefully observing that Edgar’s nature is so far from doing harms/That he suspects none” (1.2.168-9). 

            While the word “nature” is not directly used in the rest of Act I, the unnatural state of affairs is commented on extensively, and most effectively, by the Fool who tells Lear how foolish he is for having made his daughters his mothers: “. . .thou gavest them the rod, and put’st down thine own breeches. . .” (1.4.155-6).  Even more important, the Fool suggests that if you give your titles away, you will find yourself not only without a home but without an identity: “Now thou art an O without a figure. . .Thou art nothing” (1.4.174-5).  Shakespeare seems to be suggesting that if you give all of your status and possessions away, you will perhaps enter a more “natural” condition but this is a very dangerous state.  Everything that happens in Act I and the commentary on the new state of affairs, especially on the part of the Fool, prepares us to witness a new Lear, a Lear who will be stripped to nothing.  He becomes what he calls Edgar in the storm scene: “unaccommodated man. . .a poor bare forked animal”  (3.4.99).

            Yet, ironically, this unaccommodated man will bring forth a new Lear, one who is finally in touch with the better part of his own nature.  In the final scenes of the play we witness a Lear who may be a broken piece of nature.  Gloucester, when he meets Lear on the road to Dover, calls him a “ruined piece of nature” (4.6.126).  When Cordelia sees him for the first time since his rejection of her she says, “O you kind gods,/Cure this great breach in his abused nature” (4.7.12-13).  In what is perhaps one of the most beautiful speeches in the play, Lear kneels before Cordelia and admits his confusion, his foolishness:

Pray, do not mock me.

I am a very foolish fond old man,

Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less.

And to deal plainly

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

Methinks I should know you and know this man.

Yet I am doubtful, for I am mainly ignorant

What place this is, and all the skill I have

Remembers not these garments. Nor I know not

Where I did lodge last night.  Do not laugh at me,

For as I am a man, I think this lady

To be my child Cordelia.  4.7.58-68

It is as if Lear has been stripped to his essential nature, and we find that there is goodness and humility in this man who once seemed a raging monster.  He tells Cordelia, “If you have poison for me, I will drink it./I know you do not love me, for your sisters/Have, as I do remember, done me wrong./You have some cause; they have not” (4.7.70-74).  Lear’s complete reversal in this scene, his humble recognition that he has wronged Cordelia, brings out a new understanding of “nature” for Lear, for Cordelia, and for the play’s audience.  The best parts of our nature are not those that allow us chaotic, stormy madness that Lear himself embodies in Act I, Scene I or malevolent, manipulativeness, as evinced by Edmund who calls on nature to help him with his evil ambition.  Good “nature” in Shakespeare’s world is that which is capable of love.  When Lear tells Cordelia she has cause to hate him, she answers in the spirit of this love: “No cause, no cause” (4.7.75).  When Gloucester learns that his loyal son, Edgar has been his true guide, "his flawed heart. . . /Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief,/Burst smilingly" (5.3.202-204).  Even Edmund, as he is dying, wishes to do "some good. . . despite his own nature" (5.3.252).  Thus the ending of King Lear, despite the death of Cordelia and then Lear, focuses entirely on the spirit of loving redemption and forgiveness.

           

Essay Topics for King Lear

English 102.08558

Honors Section

Spring 2013

Dr. Van Slyck

Essay Topics for King Lear (essay due April 25)

1.     Essay about character:  character is revealed by speech, action (especially change in action), gesture, by what other characters say about the individual, and symbolically, by setting. What kind of a man is King Lear and how is he a tragic figure according to the classic definition (see Aristotle in coursepak).  What is his major flaw or error?  Consider also Bradley’s definition of tragedy and tragic waste and contrast Lear at beginning and end of play.  Does he have recognition?  When, where?  Do you feel sympathy for him at end?  Why?  Why not?

2.     Essay about theme:  what main idea seems particularly important in the work?  What values are embodied in the idea?  Is the idea associated with a major character? Here is a list of important themes: loyalty, nature, madness, justice, pride, jealousy, greed, suffering, mortality, chaos. . .  Choose one theme and trace it through several characters and scenes.  Come up with a claim about the meaning of this theme in King Lear.

3.     Essay about symbolism: what symbols can be located in the work?  How is a particular symbol related to a character or theme? For example, hands (loyalty, betrayal) and eyes (blindness, insight) appear repeatedly throughout the play.  Burgundy refuses to take Cordelia’s hand; Lear is shocked when Regan takes Goneril’s hand.  Late in the play Gloucester begs to take Lear’s hand and Lear replies, “Let me wipe it first.  It smells of mortality.”  Trace one image and make a claim about its symbolic significance.

4.     Essay about setting: does the author provide extensive visual, symbolic, dramatic detail throughout the text?  How is that detail related to character and/or theme? For example, what is the symbolic significance of the storm in King Lear?  How is the storm related to the character of Lear?  Choose at least three quotations that reveal Lear’s connection to the storm.  Create a thesis statement that makes a claim about this connection.

Special note: I have asked you to find an important speech in the text (6-10) lines.  Find one that fits the topic you are interested in above and let that speech introduce your essay and your thesis.  Speeches must be memorized and we will begin RECITATION Tuesday April 16.

Please see my handout on guidelines for strong writing in coursepak.  All essays for English 102 should be 600 to 800 words (minimum).  You should include a heading in upper left corner (name, course, essay #, date, my name.)  The essays should be typed, double-spaced, using 12 point font, Times New Roman.  You should include a Work(s) Cited entry with page numbers for parenthetical documentation using original page numbers (or line numbers if it is a play); if the story or play is from an online source, still use line numbers for play; just the author’s name after quotation from story will suffice.  We will go over these details in class.

Stand up kind of Guy

                                                      Oedipus is a leader he is powerful he is a stand up kind of guy he is emotional but he is also blind. In Oedipus Rex, the character Oedipus shows good qualities during his troubled times. Even when he was accused of killing the king, who ironically was also his dad, He still insisted on finding out the truth about the unfortunate death.  “I say that you slew the man whose slayer you seek” (Sophocles line 376). When Oedipus is accused by Tiresias of committing the murder of the king, he is still blind to the fact that he is indeed the slayer that he seeks. While going back and forth with Creon about his accusations Oedipus realizes that there is indeed a chance that this tale that Creon has told can be truthful.  “Hearing you just now, my lady, how my soul wanders, how my mind shakes me! (Sophocles l.749).  After realizing from a conversation with his wife Jocasta that there is indeed a chance that he can very well be the killer of the king, Oedipus shows that he is no coward because he still seek to find out the truth. I commend Oedipus for wanting to find out the truth, he could of easily just denied all accusations, but he did not showing that he is a standup guy.

Oedipus Rex

     "Reason lives in the mind, wisdom dwells in the heart." In Sopocles' ancient play Oedipus Rex; the intelligent yet misinformed main character Oedipus builds shadows from logic and confidently believes them to be rays of wisdom. With no knowledge of his true past or the identity of his real parents, Oedipus runs far from a prophecy in which it is told that he would slay his own father and wed his own mother. Though his intentions were to brake the prophecy, he comes to a complete surprise when a powerful prophet accuses Oedipus that the pollution of the city he is now king of, is in peril because of him.  Oedipus argues with the wise prophet confidently, without realizing that his reason is turning his tongue black, and ultimately leading to his blindness.
     From the beginning of the play, we can see Oedipus is a rational individual who seeks intelligence. His ability to figure out the riddle the Sphinx used to haunt the town is the first example of his sharp mind. Also certain thoughts he shares, such as "...but know that I have been weeping much and wandering many roads of the mind." (Sophocles 72) Oedipus is a man who takes pride in his intelligence, this is the Hubris that begins tainting the connection between his mind and heart. Perhaps Oedipus finds no use in wisdom, or maybe his position as a leader and king, makes rational thinking necessary. His ignorance coupled with his ego clog his ears and eyes to the reality that is playing out his unanswered questions, right in front of him without realizing. Oedipus thinks himself as a wise man, because he knows not the experience and patience that wisdom is made of, but only listens to the analytical ramble inside his head.
     The prophet Tiresias is the symbol of wisdom. An old man, physically blind yet spiritually translating the futures of many unlucky individuals. His notoriety amongst several other plays and also the talk of other characters makes it obvious that Tiresias is a man called upon time and time again. "I know that my lord Tiresias most always sees the same as my lord Apollo; from him one investigating this might learn the wisest things."( Sophocles 293) Even the Chorus speaks well of him, yet Oedipus decides to challenge his prophecy. We can see the clash between rationality and wisdom as Oedipus bellows with anger, and Tiresias speaks truth calmly, while trying to explain his misfortune. Even though Oedipus is in a pedestal and crowned, his ignorance swallows him completely at the end.

Oedipus's tragedy because of believes prophecy or not?

Is oracle real? Is the reason of Oedipus's tragedy coming true because he believes prophecy or disbelieves it? There are pivotal 3 oracles. The first is when Oedipus was birth. Oedipus’s genuine parents trust the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Then the Apollo oracle told him that he would murder his father and marry his mother when he grew up raised by adopter who are King and Queen of Isthmus. The third oracle comes out involving that there is plague in Thebe. As the King of Thebe, Oedipus sends Creon to Apollo’s home at Pytho. Apollo says which Thebe will be healed only until the killer of Laius King found.

The whole play are connected by these three oracles. With developing of these oracles, Oedipus are closer and closer to his destiny.  

Is that an irony? On the one hand, when he trusts what Apollo says, he is leaded to direction of the answer. “Phoebus clearly ordered us, my lord, to drive out the pollution being fostered in this very land, not to nurture it unhealed.” (Sophocles lines 102-04). He believes it, and promises to find out who is the killer. This belief becomes the beginning of his unknown secrete exposed. On another hand, he tries to prove that he is a perfect King and defenses his fate from prophecies. Oedipus says, “But I deem myself the child of Chance, who gives good things, and I will not be dishonored. She is my mother, and brothers, the Months, have seen me both small and great. Being born what I am, I could never be another so I should seek out my descent.” (Sophocles lines 1102-07). He ignores Jocasta’s advise but goes forward of it. However, things are getting deeper and clearer. He is like betting his destiny for against the prophecy.

Whatever Oedipus believes the prophecy or not, he is destined to be made fun by his fate. Even though he struggles and wants to confirm he isn’t that unlucky in the end, it only brings him to downfall more quickly. In the end, Oedipus kindly has noticed his prophecy has come true, but he denies as a blind. 

 At first glance, Oedipus seems  the victim of an unfortunate series of events. He was cursed and doomed without a chance. He flees his perceived homeland of Corinth, because it seems like the rational thing to do as he has just gotten word of the prophesy that he will murder his father and kill his mother. Furthermore, we don't see him trying to examine his inner experience as he journeys to find the root of evil in the land of Thebes. In his quest, he looks to hard facts for his answers, and gets lost in his pursuit of the truth. Rather than looking inward, he becomes preoccupied with suspicion and blame. As he looks to the blind Tiresius for answers, he does not heed his warning to halt in his questioning, and becomes rather defensive when he doesn't get what he wants: "You would not explain what you understand, but rather intend to betray us and destroy the city." (345)


For some reason blog is not allowing me to reply to you so my comment is here:  (Dr Van)



Andrew--it seems as though you want to focus on the way Oedipus looks at facts and gets lost in suspicion and blame instead of looking within.  You need to break down the play into specific examples of this (Tiresias, Creon, Jocasta, Messenger etc) and analyze his reasoning and failure in each instance--then you need to decide how you want to conclude--does he get better in the end at confronting truth?