Humanity in King Lear - Essay Example

However, on a different perspective, it is also possible to see the play as a declaration that humanity is an make-believe ideal. In this play, only those who recognize and value the fundamental human condition possess humanity. For example, as King Lear ages and advances into madness, he is stripped of his title, thrown out of his home, and reduced to nothing. It is a sharp depiction that man is really just a “bare, forked, pitiable animal” and even he, who supposedly owns a noble title, is no more than this.

Metaphors are used to acknowledge his inconsequentiality and establish his epiphany as a mere mortal. Lear is able to recognize the values of humanity in his journey to humility. It is shown when he tells his daughter Cordelia to give in to her fate in jail, signifying Lear’s discovery that genuine filial love has more bearing than cultural materialism focusing on power, property, and rank. Still, it is not possible to merely interpret the play as an suggestion of the basic void that the world is made of --- where Lear is shown as accommodating to the idea that there is nothing but the dreary, cruel, and cold world represented in the story.

Edmund, Regan, and Goneril’s portrayed logical sanity contradicts their base natures, as symbolized by animal metaphors such as “toad spotted traitor” and “pelican daughters.” While it is natural for human beings to transcend their own limits, this creative tendency to exceed oneself is also the source of destructiveness, a paradox that King Lear explores. This difficult dialectic poses the problem of respecting the norm while at the same time going beyond it. Excess may become too excessive, yet such superfluity is also precisely that which marks off men and women from the inhuman precision of beasts, or indeed of Goneril and Reagan.

Lear’s daughters may have a point in failing to appreciate their father’s entourage of a hundred knights. However, what they miss is the more vital point that Lear expresses at the onset of the play “O reason not the need.” It is nevertheless inherent to human --- being not beasts --- that desires go beyond the minimal need if there is no rationale why humans should want more than is required for survival. However, excessive material possessions may hinder a man’s ability to identify with the misery of others and feel care.

This thought becomes clear to Lear when he is thrown out of his home into the storm, moments before he meets Edgar disguised as Poor Tom. This same insight becomes clear to Gloucester as well, after he is blinded. On the other hand, Cordelia’s forgiveness and mercy of her father offsets this harsh want for excess or surplus. Cordelia’s attitude towards Lear even extends beyond the set standards of justice. It is Cordelia’s attitude depicting both restriction and generosity that resolves several of the text’s formal antinomies.

This is shown when she tells Lear that her love should be suitably divided between himself and her future spouse no matter how unreservedly her love is given. However, when Cordelia dies, another problem is presented. After all, it is a matter of controlling what seems to be a permanent inconsistency in the material composition of humans, and not merely a matter of resolving preset contradictions. It is a tragedy because the play asserts the fact that no poetic imagery is sufficient to resolve this contradiction.

Another excess depicted in the play is the excessive ability of humans to inflict pain on each