Fate in Shakespeares King Lear :: King Lear essays

Fate in King Lear         Theres a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how wewill.  These explicates from Hamlet are echoed, even more pessimistically,  inShakespeares play, The tragedy of King Lear where Gloucester saysLike flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, they kill us for theirsport.  In Lear, the characters are subjected to the various tragedies oflife over and over again.         An abundance of cyclic imagery in Lear shows that good people areabused and wronged  regardless of their own noble deeds or intentions.Strapped to a wheel of fire, valet de chambre suffer and endure, prosper and decline,their very existence imaged as a voyage out and a return.  The movementfrom childhood to age and back again, the many references to result whosewheel spins humans downward even as it lifts, the abundance of naturalcycles which are seen as controlling experience, even perhaps the m ovementof play itself from format to chaos to restoration of order to divisionagain.         Throughout the text, the movements of celestial bodies are used toaccount for human action and misfortune.  Just as the stars in theircourses are fixed in the skies, so do the characters view their lives ascaught in a pattern they have no power to change.  Lear sets the play in execution in banishing Cordelia when he swears by all the operation of theorbs from whom we exist and cease to be that his decision shall not berevoked.  How like the scene in Julius Caesar wherein Caesar says For Iam constant as the Northern star   Lear vows to be resolute but diesregretting his decision at the hands of his daughters who claim love himmore than word can wield and are alone felicitate in his presence.         That Edmund disbelieves in the influence of the stars adds to theplays recurring theme that part of our fate i s our character that wechoose  our grapple in life by how we choose to act.  Similarly, in LearGloucesters feelings predict what is to come when he says These lateeclipses of the sun and moon portend no good...     And because of thisGloucester begins to envision a world where Love cools, friendship fallsoff, brothers divide...   While his father misunderstands the importanceof the celestial bodies, his bastard son, Edmund denies the importance ofthe movements of the heavenly bodies.  He calls it an excellent fopperyto make unrighteous of our disasters the sun, the moon and stars.  (Just as inJulius Caesar  we learn that ... The fault .