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 words from hamlet are echoed, even more pessimistically,  inShakespeares play, The Tragedy of King Lear where Gloucester says wish 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 teemingness of cyclical imagery in Lear shows that good people areabused and wronged  heedless of their own noble deeds or intentions.Strapped to a wheel of fire, homo suffer and endure, prosper and decline,their very existence imaged as a trip out and a return.  The driftfrom childhood to age and back again, the some(prenominal) references to fortune whosewheel spins humans downward even as it lifts, the abundance of naturalcycles which are seen as controlling experience, even perhaps the movemen tof play itself from order to chaos to restoration of order to divisionagain.         end-to-end the text, the movements of celestial bodies are used toaccount for human action and misfortune.  retributory 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 inmotion in banishing Cordelia when he swears by all the operation of theorbs from whom we exist and cease to be that his purpose shall non berevoked.  How like the scene in Julius Caesar wherein Caesar says For Iam changeless 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 bathroom wield and are alone felicitate in his presence.         That Edmund disbelieves in the fix of the stars adds to theplays recurring theme that part of our fate is our character that wechoose  our plentitude in life by how we choose to act.  Similarly, in LearGloucesters feelings predict what is to stick to when he says These lateeclipses of the sun and moon portend no good...     And because of thisGloucester begins to realize a world where Love cools, friendship fallsoff, brothers divide...   While his let misunderstands the importanceof the celestial bodies, his bastard son, Edmund denies the importance ofthe movements of the heavenly bodies.  He calls it an fine fopperyto make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon and stars.  (Just as inJulius Caesar  we learn that ... The breaking .