King Lear Paper
03/25/2006

Although Lear comes to reconciliation with Cordelia, his estranged daughter, and gains knowledge of compassion for poor naked wretches, the play’s ultimate message is not one of growth and redemption but of despair. Lear ultimately is unable to save Cordelia from being killed, and Gloucester’s question about whether the gods truly care about humans or merely toy with them is left unanswered, although the end of Lear’s struggles seem to imply that the gods either do not care about humans or find them amusing to play with.

Lear’s and Gloucester’s views of the universe are contrasted throughout the play; Gloucester believes initially in the justice of the gods, and then progresses towards despair after he finds out about the inversion of the natural order brought about by Edmund’s betrayal. His world view is turned upside down—he had always believed in astrology and the fact that men could be controlled by nature, as seen in his conversation with Edmund in 1.2, but now he sees that his own son, whom he had trusted, has betrayed him. He comes to believe that humans are weak, mere insects, while the gods are cruel, strong, and toy with humans for fun. “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, They kill us for their sport.” (4.1, ll. 38-39) He revives temporarily after Edgar shocks him, by assisting him in committing suicide, into believing that he should endure instead of giving up and committing suicide. However, at the end of the play, in 5.2, Gloucester refuses to go with Edgar off the battlefield. “No further, sir; a man may rot even here.” (5.2, l. 8) Edgar once again tries to convince Gloucester that, although we may die at any time and the gods may be cruel to us, we must endure and steel ourselves against life nevertheless. Gloucester merely replies, “And that’s true too.” (5.2, l. 11) This ambiguous statement might have been one of hope—Gloucester recognizing that one must endure and steel oneself against life no matter what—if it were not for the “too.” Gloucester implies that both the view that men must endure and the view that men should give in to despair are equally valid. In other words, men can choose to be strong and endure—or they may truly have no hope and despair. Both are valid choices; despairing is given equal validity as struggling on, and Gloucester has continually chosen to despair and give in to his troubles.

It may seem from Gloucester’s statement that the reader is given an equal choice between despairing and struggling on; however, as Lear’s struggles against the world end in despair, it seems that despair is the ultimate end of everything, even if one chooses to struggle on. Lear, in contrast to Gloucester, chooses from when he is first kicked out by both of his daughters to endure. He seems to initially espouse the view that humans can endure, that people should fight against our own internal storms and struggle towards understanding the world instead of despair. “Thou’dst shun a bear, but if thy flight lay towards the roaring sea, thou’dst meet the bear i’the mouth. (…) In such a night to shut me out? Pour on, I will endure.” (3.4, ll. 9-11, 17-18) Lear seems to not only be talking about facing one’s struggles, but fighting against one’s problems rather than running away from them. For him, it is much better to fight on rather than run away—to endure instead of despair.

Lear’s world view too has been turned upside down—he calls Regan and Goneril unnatural for kicking him out, as he initially believes that a daughter’s natural duty is to be always loving of her father. “No, you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both that all the world shall—I will do such things—What they are yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth!” (2.2, ll. 467-471) He can’t believe that his other daughters would kick him out of the house in Act 2. He addresses Regan, trying to plead with he to let him stay with her: “Thou better knowst the offices of nature, bond of childhood, effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude.” (2.2, ll. 366-368) His world view depends on the fact that his daughters will always love him as good daughters should naturally—whether that love is fake, as in 1.1 when Regan and Goneril profess their love for Lear in evenly-metered rehearsed speeches, or real, as with Cordelia’s declaration that she will love Lear as much as she should due to their natural bond. In Act 3, Lear struggles to understand what kind of a world it is where daughters can turn against their fathers and break the natural bonds of family such. He decides, as shown in his speech in 3.4, that rather than give into despair that the world is such that daughters can be so cold to their fathers, he will endure. He will change his world view and struggle to understand how it really is, rather than give into despair and commit suicide, as Gloucester tries to. Lear, in other words, focuses on humans rather than the gods—it is up to humans to change their world view and to endure in this world, despite what the gods may do. This point of view is contrasted with Gloucester’s, who believes that humans should crack and give into despair at what the gods can do, and that humans are totally controlled by the gods.

Lear’s point of view on the matter might offer a bit of hope—even if humans are controlled by the gods, they can still struggle and fight against it. Lear does reform his world view instead of despairing, enough so that in 4.6, when he meets Gloucester on the hearth, he recognizes that the world is indeed a dark place. He states that justice is inverted in the world—that rich people are favored in the world’s justice system, while authority figures are hypocritical and commit the crimes that they themselves profess to protect. Lear then states that if everyone sins, then no one can really be a sinner, and thus he’ll forgive them all. Although Lear seems to be mad, trying to stab his imaginary sons-in-law later in the scene, he is reforming his world view and realizing that the world is out of order, even if he tends on the side of cynicism to realize that. His character develops to the point where he recognizes that flattery is not everything, and that he too is human. “Go to, they are not men o’their words: they told me I was everything; ‘tis a lie, I am not ague-proof.” (4.6, ll. 103-104) He is thus able to recognizes the value of Cordelia’s statement in Act 1: “Good my lord, you have begot me, bred me, loved me. I return those duties back as are right fit, obey you, love you, and most honor you.” (1.1, ll. 95-98) In other words, he recognizes the value of her natural love for him rather than the flattery that people have been giving him as the king. Lear later begs Cordelia for her forgiveness when he meets her in 4.7, and Cordelia says that he has no cause to beg for her forgiveness. The natural bond of love between Lear and Cordelia seems to have been restored, and Lear has developed in character enough to realize the value of Cordelia’s natural love.

Ultimately, though, after being defeated by the forces of England, Lear says to Cordelia that all he wants to do is run away and hide from the world with her. “Come, let’s away to prison; we two alone will sing like birds i’the cage.” (5.3, ll. 8-10) Lear, although he has talked of enduring before, and although he himself has reformed his world view instead of committing suicide to get away from it all as Gloucester has tried to, ultimately wants to just hide from the world. It seems that he has given into despair of another sort here—although he doesn’t want to give into any urges to commit suicide, he does want to run away from it all after seeing how even Cordelia’s good intentions to rescue him from England have been struck down. Lear has realized how human justice and natural order may be corrupted in 4.6, and how even the best intentions can go astray. Therefore, despite the fact that Lear has endured and grown quite a bit throughout the play, in the end he gives up on enduring. The conclusion seems to be that perhaps the best we can hope for is not to endure, grow in character, and struggle to understand the world, as Lear has done, but that we can only endure by running away to our own world. In that sense, Gloucester’s dilemna of whether to endure or to give in to despair is resolved; Lear has given up on enduring and despairs enough at the state of the world that he wants to hide in his own little world with Cordelia. Lear, after all, has tried to struggle and seen that, in the end, Cordelia’s fulfillment of natural duty by rescuing him has failed. Perhaps we should realize that we as weak humans can only hope to endure by hiding from the world, as Lear offers no further conclusions on this matter.

Additionally, the one character that throughout the play had stood for the values of natural order and natural love is torn away from Lear in 5.3. Cordelia, from the outset of the play, had shown Lear natural love: in 1.1, she refused to say that she loved Lear any more than duty bound her to love him. Lear, then believing that appearances were all, kicked her out of the house. After the two are reconciled, Lear begs for her forgiveness and gets it. Edmund, who throughout the play has stood for the inversion of natural order—he states in 1.2 that the human idea of natural order only serves to constrain people—has his own plans for Lear and Cordelia, though. He orders Cordelia to be hanged; although Lear tries to save her, he ultimately fails. Even though Edmund dies at Edgar’s hands, Cordelia has nevertheless died as well. Cordelia, who has tried to serve her natural duty as a daughter by rescuing Lear from England, has been defeated by the plans of the person who tried to invert the natural order. Lear appeals to the gods when he asks Cordelia’s body, “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life and thou no breath at all?” (5.3, ll. 305-306) He implies that there is something wrong in a universe where lowly animals such as rats are allowed by the gods to live on while people such as Cordelia, who try to uphold natural bonds of love, die. Why would the gods allow such a thing to happen if they truly cared about what happens to humans? The fact that Lear has grown in character enough to recognize the value of Cordelia’s natural love is meaningless if that natural love has no significance in the long run. Even if Cordelia has tried to uphold natural love, and Lear has come to recognize the value of that, natural love means nothing to the uncaring gods who let people such as Cordelia die.

Ultimately, Lear’s question about why the gods allow bad things to happen and don’t seem to care about humans is left unanswered, raising echoes of Gloucester’s statement that the gods toy around with humans for their amusement. This implies that the gods truly do not care about humans. If the conclusion of King Lear is that gods do not care about humans, then perhaps the best we can hope for is to try to endure in spite of their lack of attention, as Lear has tried to do. Lear has continually focused throughout the play on humans—he puts the focus on humans by choosing to endure in a world where the natural order as he sees it has been perverted. However, as shown in Lear’s desire to run away and hide with Cordelia at the end of the play, even trying to endure may ultimately fail. Thus, the play truly points to a message of despair: Lear too has given up on enduring, and the conclusion seems to be that all humans can do in a universe where the gods don’t care about them is despair and hide.

In the end of the play, all the characters who have tried to pervert the natural order—Regan, Goneril, Cornwall, and Edmund—have died, but Cordelia has died with them, defeated by one of those who has tried to pervert the natural order. How can there be justice and redemption by the gods in a universe where those who try to uphold natural bonds of love are defeated? Why would caring gods allow Cordelia, who has only tried to uphold the natural order, to die? King Lear’s ultimate message seems to be that there may be no natural order upheld by the gods after all, and that us weak humans may not be able to endure in this uncaring world. Lear ultimately does not find redemption, but only despair at how the world is, and so tries to hide in prison with Cordelia in 5.3. The ultimate conclusion of the play seems to confirm that the best we can hope for in an uncaring world where the gods allow someone like Cordelia to die along with those who tried to pervert the natural order is to hide and endure on our own, despairing, instead of struggling against the world.