Lear Blog 2

They love each other in the nature of a father and daughter, though Lear’s foolishness ruins their relationship. Cordelia is the only daughter that truly loves Lear, and she cannot embellish her love for this fact. Regan and Goneril have mastered the “talk” but are unfaithful and seek only to overthrow their father. Lear cannot understand this, even with Cordelia’s truth. His inability to hear her honest truth comes in his foolishness. He believes in words, not actions, and Cordelia loses the word battle because she is not dishonest.

I have been in the middle of situations like this, and the outcome is not necessarily the same every time. I have also seen situations like this… it’s an interesting exercise in human psychology. Though parents are usually hardest on their children during the teenage years, this causes teenagers to improve their skills of manipulation. The cycle is a vicious one, because as parents increase their punishments, kids find new ways to outsmart them. This often leads to lying as a form of manipulation, which never goes over well. One may get away with it at first, but eventually they are found out, and the repercussions are far worse than expected. I cannot say that I am exempt from using my powers of manipulation to get what I want… unfortunately. I believe honesty is the best policy, so I won’t lie to my parents, but I am very skilled at being nice at the right time in order to get what I want. This is not something I do as often now, because I realize that I am essentially lying to my parents emotionally. On the flip side, I have also been the loser in this “game.” Many times when I should just step down from an argument or issue, I continue talking because I have to prove my point. I suppose that is what I get for being stubborn.

Lear Blog 1

The unhappiness in Gloucester’s family lies in Edmund’s illegitimacy, while Lear’s family is torn apart by poor decisions and unfaithfulness. Edmund feels wronged by his father’s shame toward him, and so he finds a way to get back at Gloucester by turning Edgar against him, and he against Edgar. This is the beginning of the tearing apart of Gloucester’s family. The fault here lies within both Edmund and Gloucester. Gloucester is ashamed of Edmund’s illegitimacy, and this rightfully upsets Edmund. Edmund takes it to too much of an extreme when, in order to get “his share” of the inheritance, he pits his father and half-brother against one another. Here we begin to see that Edmund is not quite as innocent as he seems in the opening scene. It is a combination of Gloucester’s shame and Edmund’s vindictiveness that create the unhappiness in their family. While Edmund is somewhat justified in his unhappiness, he creates a larger problem by pursuing it beyond a feasible boundary.

Lear contributes greatly to his family’s unhappiness, primarily due to his mental instability. Even early on in the play, the reader is aware that Lear does not know his own mind. He makes a poor decision to disinherit Cordelia, his only truly faithful daughter, and resign his kingdom to the unfaithful Regan and Goneril. This soon comes back to haunt him, when Goneril turns against him and sets Regan on that same path. Lear realizes his mistake, but it is, of course, too late.

Some similarities lie between the two families in the fact that both are destroyed by fault of the fathers and the children. Regan, Goneril, and Edmund are similar characters in the fact that all three are after revenge. They have different motivations, but the result is the same; it tears their families apart.