Lear Case

Iyas Fouk Aladeh

Unit 2 Lesson 6

6. Write three paragraphs to answer each of questions a), b), and c). In proper paragraph format and using specific quotations properly cited from Act I, answer the following three questions:

a) How does the opening act of King Lear effectively demonstrate the initial situation and downward movement from Aristotle's structure of strategy?

The opening Act of King Lear demonstrates Lear's downward movement as it coincides with Aristotle's structure of Greek tragedy. The play begins with Lear, a hero of noble birth and ruler of Britain, in an ordered society soon to be disrupted by a fatal flaw that is the result of his excessive pride. His journey from the ordered to the disordered world becomes apparent after he hands his land over to his two elder daughters and banishes his youngest daughter Cordelia from the kingdom. The initial situation began when Lear asks Cordelia, "What can you say to draw / A third more opulent than your sisters?" (I i 87-88), in which she answers "Nothing, my lord" (I i 89). This demonstrates Lear's arrogance and triggers the rash decision he makes that would greatly impact the tragic events that follow. At the end of the scene, his two elder daughters immediately work to conspire against him so that he would be left with no power at all. Goneril says to Regan that they "must do something, and i' th' heat" (I ii 311). This foreshadows Lear's impending downward movement and begins the reversal of his fortunes as things go from bad to worse. Lear's recognition of the truth and the existence of his tragic circumstance becomes slightly clearer to him when he wonders whether he has lost his mind and cries out "O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!" (I v 46). Act I leaves off at this stage where Lear is about to suffer tremendously before further stages of recognition, retribution, and restitution occur later in the play.

b) How do references to three of the four principal motifs (nature and the unnatural, sanity/madness, and "nothing") reinforce the downward movement of Lear's perception of his own identity.

In Act I of King Lear, references to the principle motifs of nature and the unnatural, sanity/madness, and "nothing" all reinforce the downward movement of Lear's perception of his own identity. Lear's Fool constantly tries to warn him of his mistake with riddles, puns, and songs: "The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long / That it had it head bit off by it young" (I iv 221-222). Clearly warns the king that his daughters, each like a traitorous "cuckoo," plan to turn against the father who raised them. Lear's third daughter who loves him while the others don't, answers his big question with "Nothing, my lord," and thus seals her