74 pages • 2 hours read
William ShakespeareKing Lear
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1606A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Blindness
Blindness manifests most literally in King Lear through the unfortunate Gloucester, whose eyes Regan and Cornwall gouge out. Only after this hideous loss does Gloucester see all that he was blind to before: the loyalty of his betrayed son Edgar, the heartless cruelty of the false Edmund, and the pure malice of his erstwhile allies.
In the literal case of Gloucester, as well as in a heap of metaphorical references scattered throughout the play, blindness is paradoxically related to sight. The characters repeatedly demonstrate how one’s own prejudices and fears can blind someone to reality. The two fathers of the play, Lear and Gloucester, are so hampered by their own petty insecurities and egoism that they cannot perceive what is true. They must lose their “eyes” and their “I”s—meaning, their identities—to truly see reality. Part of that seeing is the capacity to see oneself and to know oneself to be weak, foolish, and flawed.
Clothing and Nakedness
When the mad Lear meets the disguised, raving, and naked Edgar in the storm, he takes a shine to him and quickly strips off his own clothes to imitate this “philosopher.” As in so many moments in this play, what at first appears to be absurd reveals a deep truth. Lear’s literal and symbolic nakedness reflect what his maturation. He learns that the difference between a king and a beggar is largely an outward performance. Beneath the ermine robe, a king is just as mortal, fleshly, and weak as a scraggly lunatic. Here, nakedness represents vulnerability and truthfulness. Specifically, Edgar’s nakedness is a form of speech that tells Lear a truth he cannot hear any other way.
The Storm
A wild storm brews ominously for much of the first half of the play. When it breaks, and Lear, Kent, the Fool, and Edgar flail around exposed to the wind and rain, catastrophe turns its other face and becomes enlightenment.
The storm here represents the incomprehensible and unpredictable power of that which is beyond human: nature, divinity, fate, and death. Taking a good battering from this storm—that is, truly confronting his own smallness, weakness, and mortality—deeply alters Lear, forcing him to understand that he’s a “poor, bare, forked animal” (3.4.108) just like everyone else. In this suffering, there is a paradoxical salvation. Lighting illuminates as much as it destroys.
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