Blindness in King Lear Essay

In the play King Lear, the darkest tragedies, by Shakespeare, blindness is a major factor of all tragic events that occur in the play. Blindness represents Lear's and Gloucester's the inability to see the truth, which eventually leads to Lear's insanity and Gloucester's literal blindness. Lear and Gloucester make the same mistake by favoring the unloving children over the loving ones due to their blindness in the face of truth. They realize the cruelty of life and the insignificance of human comparing to nature after they lost almost everything they've ever had; yet they redeem love and humanity, the most valuable things that they can ever ask for.

The parallel can be easily drawn between Lear and Gloucester. When dividing the kingdom, Lear gives all the authority to Goneril and Regan only because they flatter Lear with overblown words of "love"; and he disowns Cordelia for she can't express enough "love" for him. This action of Lear's shows his inability to distinguish true love with insincere praises that are made to obtain power. He should have more common sense that Cordelia, being his favorite daughter, loves him the most; but the fear of being abandoned and absolute powerless as an old man after retirement makes him request the prove of love and need to reassure his importance. However, as soon as Goneril and Regan are declared power, they begin scheming to take all Lear's authority away and leave him with "the infirmity of age"(I,i,296). On the other hand, Gloucester believes Edmund's lies about Edgar wanting to kill their father to claim authority. Gloucester fears of losing power for that he already suspects his children secretly want to destroy him; as a result, he is totally convinced by Edmund, and Edgar, being told that Gloucester is angry at him, flees the kingdom. Ironically, Edmund is the one who has been planing to take over Gloucester's seat. Clearly, Lear and Gloucester share the similarity of having children who are truly loyal to them and who are trying to harm them; and sadly, they, one after another, mistake the unloving for the loving, expeling the loyal children and denoting the immoral ones as their heirs.

Nevertheless, they finally come to realizations of their mistakes when Lear has gone mad and Gloucester has been blinded. Also, they see the weakness of themselves and the insignificance of human in nature; they become caring and humble; they all the sudden start to learn these things that they could never understand in their position as king and duke. In the storm, Lear askes how Fool feels -- "How dost, my boy? Art cold?". This is the first time Lear ever concerns for anyone other than himself, reflecting the growth of his humility. Moreover, after losing his eyes, Gloucester travels with the old man to Dover, he concludes his blindness that "[he] has no way and therefore [wants] no eyes". He feels so vulnerable against evil; it's a feeling of despair, of hopeless. He doesn't desire to see more of the mercilessness in the world and in human nature; he feels as if there's no order nor goodness in the universe, nothing like happiness will ever be found. He wishes he can see his son, Edgar, before he dies, just to have a final touch of liveness. Also, Lear finds nature is hard to strike against when he is exposed to the storm. Accordingly, both Lear and Gloucester learn of their horrible mistakes and the more terrible reality of mankind.

However, Lear always has people to point out his blindness while Gloucester is always in short of information. When Lear decides to abandon Cordelia, Kent keeps telling Lear that flatteries cannot be taken to heart and he tries to explain to Lear that Cordelia shouldn't be given away like that. Yet, outraged by offence of his authority, Lear banishes Kent and sends Cordelia to France without blessing. Here, still at the beginning of the play, Lear appears to be very stubborn about his absolute power, he doesn't take advice from anyone; and he doesn't realize his senity has given away on him that he seems to be shallow. Later on, the Fool does the same job as Kent, keeps reminding Lear of his blindness. It finally works and Lear comes to his realization of his inane actions and also of his weakness as an old man in the world. On the other hand, Gloucester never has anyone to notify him of anything. He is manipulated by Edmund because he has no other sources to gather information from. He fully trusts Edmund that he gives out his idea of helping Lear and the knowledge of the coming French army. Gloucester has to discover the treachery all on his own, and its not until he is blinded by Cornwell and Regan that he finds out so. Apparently, Gloucester's lack of information causes his blindness, both literal and metaphoric; and Lear is just too obstinate to believe the reality.

In short, blindness to truth is certainly an important theme of King Lear, it triggers all the tragic events in the play. Both Lear and Gloucester undergo this unfortunate state, but they eventually discover their wrongs and taste what it feels like to be completely defeated. If they knew better, as in Lear not sending Cordelia away and Gloucester not being controlled by Edmund, nothing this tragic -- almost everyone no matter evil or good winds up dead -- could happen. However, they couldn't have learnt their weakness and insignificance against the nature nor become humble and caring if their blindness never gets to be carried away.