Green in Shakespeares Tragedy of King Lear - Essay Example

 Increase in the environmental debates has led to the fuelling of interest in the wide study of literature in regards to the environment. The pursuing of English literature in various institutions is always imagined to be about the revisiting giants of ancient times. English literature just as other disciplines apart from having relevance contemporaries in job markets explores literature study and the relation to the environment. However, question one can ask is what literature students and scholars have with the environment. Since literature engages with almost everything in life existence, environment is of no option therefore. William Shakespeare, a known English playwright and poet, is regarded widely as the greatest writer in the language of English and the pre-eminent world’s dramatist. Translation of his major plays has been done to almost all living language and more often performed than other playwrights. In his book, The Tragedy of King Lear, many aspects presage the green literature. The work of Shakespeare illuminates more about human nature that is a more instructive for a green environment. With respect to the theory of Green literature, ecocriticism involves the study of the relationship between the environment and the research. The book is all about the British elderly king who decides to give out his power and realm to one of his daughters. Even though his preferred choice is the one who loves him most, the other two disguises him and acquire the wealth. The two later turns against him but through the friends of the other daughter, he manages to ascertain the reality. In relevance to the nature, therefore, a habitat consists of different organisms’ co-existing together for mutual benefits. An organism can acquire help from the other community, for instance in support. Plants with tendrils, for example, get support from big trees to acquire sunlight (Anderson, Slovic and Grady 345). This paper, therefore, analyses the review of the play, The Tragedy of King Lear with regards to the theory of Green Literature, how ecocriticism relates both literature and environment. The theory of green literature provides the vocabulary towards environmental ethics as well as attitude in the story of King Lear. This offered a movement beyond symbolism and thematic which were widely characterized by the critical work of Shakespeare in relation to the environment representation. Unprecedented exploration time resulted in relations that were social lead to the entire production of new ideas on space, relationship in spatial alienation and social effects in King Lear. In relation to the environment, King’s tragedy was central since without any referral space, there was no existence of ideology. Also, when there was a control on the physical environment from the king, the kingdom crumbled and the end consequence was that the reign was to come to an end. In the story, main characters in different slants share utilitarian common view as far as nature are concerned. This, therefore, represents object space that needs to be controlled; be uncontrolled, since the environment is full of dangerous, chaotic nothingness (Anderson, Slovic and Grady 320). If Cordelia, for instance, is concomitant with the nature in a widespread imagination the play outlays, then certainly it is in this sense of the chaotic oblivion. Women are potently dangerous materials in King Lear, which according to the natural environment, is a habitat full of pollution and poison. Lack of reason should be silently kept as it is inconsiderable moral. However, Cordelia is never silent. For the King, therefore, women in relation to the environment each are viciously dangerous and unpredictable and to those whom freely communicates are considered monsters. In Cordelia’s evil thoughts, Lear can listen to her, and the bad thoughts connote for the King whether her status or genitalia the human subject. The fact that she is a woman makes her monstrous in her communication of the sad thoughts. Nothing is clearer in his misogyny than whatever he reveals into his insane ravings to blinded Gloucester and to Edgar. Anderson, Scott & John 351, further suggests that the world that is shrinking at no given time can shrink and yet is not bounded. In relation to the play, an aspect of controls, boundaries and ideas of drawing limits are widely seen. This, therefore, suggests that unbounded world with its potentiality slipping from control can threaten everything entirely. Power for instance, identity together with home are in agonistic irreconcilable relationship with the natural world. In the play, therefore, extreme effects of conservative and reaction lessons are obtained from the tragedies as it usually happens the time nature is unbounded. In the ecocritical reading in the play of King Lear, one major thing coming into practice is a question of control. An extensive aspect of social together with environmental implications with identity independence on control of the environment is what presupposes complete obsolescence in respect to holistic and holism thinking (Anderson, Slovic and Grady 342). In the play, Danby is correct certainly when he singles out Edmund to be a new man. The arrogance that is an individualist is seeking self-advancement and profit which quickly evolves the economic capital. King Lear in the end is singly left out in fighting alone in the world. Significantly to him, much of the fight he is having with the world is against the environment. Though the main difference, unlike Edmund is that the king loses from the beginning to the end, and Edmund relishes some victories. The king who is controlled and rather not in control of almost everything particularly the natural environment realizes his identity is list the time control ability of spatial worth is lost. The masculine identity of the king is seen when his lands is being dispossessed from him and giving it away to space. When his voice and identity is lost from him, he turns out to be more unseated and particularly un-housed when he is less distinguished from the space that is undomesticated threating civilization. Without the presence of the land, therefore, the king turns to be frenetic in regards to his identity questions. In the play, aspect of cannibalism is broadly seen. For instance, the gorge of appetite from the monstrous angle as complained by the king as this messes his generation. Also, in relation to the sparrow, its head is bitten off by its young one. When king is displeased by Goneril, Regan is told that her sister is sharp-toothed and unkind just like a vulture. At the end of the tragedy, the king tells Kent that his pelican daughters were flesh begot. Lastly, a command from King Lear to both Regan and Goneril to have the third dower digested. Although in the end, what he condemned he becomes guilty of commanding them. This, therefore, galls our justice from the description he consumes from the unnaturalness. Aspects of cannibalism always confirm and reiterate the intrusion of an unwelcome nature to the domestic traces. This creates the aspects of no peace in existence between organisms in the environment (Anderson, Grady and Slovic 367). According to the play, the worst circumstances which can be related to when the natural environment is smashed by calamities like the storm which are extremely obstructive. Also, hostility, when the king elucidates an assumption in which homelessness is only related to a given plight of people. This is in regard to a separate place of existence altogether and he distances himself from this scenario as he believes he can not be in the situation. However, the king feels the pinch the moment he hears the spill and crack of thunder as well as drenching rains. In return he possess the houseless people that are buffeted and pummeled and therefore do not get any assistance from them. He, therefore, faces the worst condition. This is because he cannot see more accurately the time his home is becoming more impossible for him. The possession of the house is only controlled by space control ability. Anderson, Scott & John 339, argues that home starts as a result of bringing some little space which is under control. King Lear as perceived is not under any control, he has no foggy idea at all about his identity from his name to where he is and the environment he occupies. Up to this moment, he is still blaming other people, as evidenced when he asks pity Tom which is at the state of misery if he is a man more than the situation. At Dover, the willingness in relinquishing the voice rattles him more often in terms of delusion that still he is what he is as he claims he is the king at every inch. At this moment, the king indeed is a sorry man and more positively on the art in which he disparages. He presents this in the form of a coin whereby it will undoubtedly appear better than the sight piercing side. In conclusion, therefore, the theory of green literature provides more aspects of symbolism in respect to the environment and environmental ethics together with ethics in the book, Tragedy of King Lear. With reputes to ecocriticism, relationship between the environment and literature is expended. Coexistence exists between the two both in positive and negative approaches and the end; it is the outcome that is regarded more imperative (Anderson, Slovic and Grady 360). From the beginning to the end, King Lear’s limit status as well as growth are consistently ventured out in the environmental and spatial terms. The entire tragedy is all about struggle in terms of boundaries as it relates to the movement of the nation o of higher heights and lands to a personal scale full of insane and more so of imagined prison. Along the story line, the environment aspect triumphs and the result are Lear’s slate is wiped clean from his eminent human pursuits. The identity, power and home of the king is lost to nature as exemplified through the theory of Green literature, and more so to the daughters and also to their ilk. Work cited Anderson, Lorraine, Scott Slovic, and John P. O’Grady. Literature and the Environment: A Reader on Nature and Culture. New York: Longman, 1999. Print. Read More