Issues of personal responsibility, free will, and justice move our sympathies through a work of literature, leading readers to s identify or despise the characters as they are. shaped in a piece. In The Tragedy of King Lear, William Shakespeare draws on his villains as well as his heroes, asking us to explore what moves someone to act. We are asked to determine the culpability of the characters' actions and decide how appropriate their punishments are. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Shakespeare tests our sensibilities by allowing us to intimately encounter his villains through their soliloquies. In Act One, Scene Two, we meet Edmund who is plotting against his half-brother, Edgar, to take over their elderly father's entire fortune. Edmund tries to persuade us that he is only doing what he must do, of his own free will, because it is his lawful obligation. However, although Shakespeare raises the question of whether past circumstances can mitigate the blame, he fails to cast viable doubt on Edmund's guilt. In this way, King Lear suggests that people get what they deserve, that there is justice in the end result, and that the way things happen is always appropriate. Edmund reflects on his own responsibility immediately after executing his plan against Edgar. He presents his father with a letter, apparently from his brother, in which Edmund detailed Edgar's alleged greed and impatience to acquire the Gloucester inheritance. After Gloucester reads the letter, Edmund appeases him by promising to find Edgar and confront him about his intentions. Gloucester comes out and we are brought into the head of this illegitimate son who is determined to secure his financial situation. For this, Edmund coldly admits that he is aware of what he is doing. “This is the excellent folly of the world,” said Edmund. "That when we are ill of fortune...we blame the sun, the moon, and the stars for our disasters; as if we were villains by necessity" (I.ii.99-102). Edmund makes a distinction between one who will not accept responsibility for his actions and himself who will not blame “heavenly constraint” (I.ii.102) for what he does. This admission makes Edmond's wiles more sinister; he believes he is in control of his actions and is freely plotting against his brother. However, we also grudgingly give him our respect; he does not childishly try to hide his guilt. The words that Edmond uses, "an admirable escape from the man who is master of a whore, to put his goatish temperament to the charge of a star" (I.ii.105-6), recall his father's words for a few minutes earlier. Referring to Cordelia's audacity, Kent's banishment, and his own son's apparent disloyalty, Gloucester blames "these late eclipses of the sun and moon" (I.ii.88). Gloucester's superstitions make him seem foolish next to Edmund's calm and intact rationality. These are not only subtle differences in character between father and son, but also hints at Edmund's irreverence towards Gloucester. Edmund is probably referring to his father when he describes the behavior of "drunkards, liars, and adulterers, in forced obedience to the planetary influence" (I.ii.103-4). Edmund does not feel that Gloucester has taken responsibility for his affair with his mother and is still angered by this fact. The circumstances of Edmund's birth emerge as an increasingly clear source of the resentment Edmund harbors. "My father joined my mother under the dragon's tail,and my birth was under the Big Dipper, so it follows that I am hard and lustful," said Edmund. "Fuck! I should have been what I am, if the youngest star in the firmament had twinkled at my bastardy" (I.ii.106-110). Edmund implies that his "bastardy", and not his "birth" or his "nature" is the reason he is the way he is; Edmund may not blame the stars of the cosmos for his greed, but he does blame his father. Ending with the word "bastardizing", he emphasizes. on this event as an important reason why he is "harsh and lustful"; the circumstances of his birth left him no choice but to fend for himself Edmond's words are self-critical and evocative, in this first part. of the play, a sort of vague pathos We still remember the first scene of Gloucester presenting his illegitimate son to the Earl of Kent "Although this rascal came into the world with a certain impertinence before being sent for, his. mother was nevertheless just; there was some good play to be had, and a son of a whore must be given credit," said Gloucester (Ii16-19). Edmund appears to be much younger than he is, responding respectfully to his father's taunts towards his mother and the resignation of having been "brazen" (II9) to recognize his mistake with a mistress The genre of King Lear is undoubtedly tragedy: tragic because of the absence of love in. These five acts The subplot of Gloucester, Edmund and Edgar particularly highlights this lack of love within a family. From the beginning, Gloucester takes his affair with Edmund's mother and his obligations lightly. subsidiaries to raise his son It is not surprising that Edmund, in describing his conception, says: "My father composed [sic] with my mother" (I.ii.106) in an almost technical way, in the same way that one might mix chemicals Edmund's own views on love and sexual relationships are also skewed as we approach the end of the play. When confronted with two sisters who are both interested in a relationship with him, Edmund thinks logically and strategically about which one he should choose. “I have sworn my love to both sisters,” said Edmund. “Each jealous of the other, like the stings of the viper” (Vi55-7). He even appears insensitive to the news of the death of the two sisters; he says: “Yet Edmund was loved / One poisoned the other for me / And afterward committed suicide” (V.ii.239-41). He expresses no love for Regan or Goneril, only a faint, sinister pride. Edmund's rhetoric may receive some initial support from readers, but, ultimately, what happens to Gloucester allows no sympathy for the liberator of his fate, however harsh it may be. may try to convince us otherwise. We can almost imagine ourselves sympathizing with Edmund when he speaks of his “bastardism” at the beginning of the play. Later, his love triangle with King Lear's daughters, Regan and Goneril, speaks to the sisters' lack of love for their father. We certainly do not support the daughters who tried to strip their father of his titles, his honor and even his house when one then the other chased him away. Although at this point we are disinclined to sympathize with Edmund, we are less inclined to do so with Lear's daughters. It follows that Gloucester is never described as a caring father. He is first presented as adulterous and then unrepentant when he hastens to attribute responsibility for each upheaval to the “wisdom of nature” (I.ii.89) and to astrological disturbances. The best portrayal of him, at the end of the play, is that of a weakened old man who suffered greatly at the hands of his illegitimate son for whom he showed no love. Lear, however, is a charactermore sorry. After the old king (who has just divided his kingdom) is kicked out of Goneril's house, he is taken in by Regan, who is so angered by this arrangement that she locks him outside in the rain. “Isn’t it as if this mouth had to tear this hand / To carry food to it?” he cries. "O Regan, Goneril / Your good father whose frank hearing gave everything -" (III.iv.16-17, 20-21) This father is closer to one who could bring unexpected gifts to his daughters and them spoiling with clothes and jewelry in an outward display of affection. By describing his bastardization, Edmund draws our attention. He does it without emotion and laconically, throwing cold words of contempt towards people. who will not defend his own actions, nor his father, nor even the reader captivated by the reminders of the first scene where we witness this dynamic father-son. He shows us his human side. We are therefore led to question justice. Shakespeare leaves his readers wondering if it is Gloucester's fault, as an irresponsible father, that Edmund turned against him. In the same way, we wonder if Edmond's past is a mitigating circumstance in our judgment of him. However, for justice to be served, Gloucester's punishment would need to be tailored to the crime we perceive him to have committed. Gloucester's blinding is a pivotal moment in the play. Edmund leaves before Cornwall accomplishes the deed, but he is aware of what is coming. Edmund does not speak until Gloucester is brought in, but the last thing he says, a few scenes earlier, is an expression of his agreement to bring the king before Cornwall, as Cornwall says, "so that he may be ready for... his arrest" (III.v.15). He doesn't speak even when Regan and Goneril offer their suggestions on what should be inflicted on Gloucester. “Hang him immediately,” Regan said. Goneril says, “Pluck out his eyes” (III.vii.4-5). The next time we see Edmund, he is exchanging seemingly affectionate words with Goneril. In other words, he seduces the woman he knows is responsible for his father's blindness. Gloucester's punishment, however, can also be seen as an enlightenment for the old man who reunites with his son, Edgar, and realizes how "blind" he has been to Edmund's evil ways. Edmund's punishment for his role in the blinding should be as horrible as that suffered by his father; this is not the case. Although Edmund's punishment is death, he dies proudly and smugly; he does not die before he can tell Albany the bad news that he and Albany's wife have ordered Cordelia to be hanged "in prison, and/to put the blame on her own despair/That she forbidden" (V.iii.253-5).The meaning we give to the question of justice in this subplot is commutable to the way we perceive what happened to King Lear and his daughters. The sisters' punishment is to kill each other out of greed; they fight all their lives over clothes, possessions and lovers until finally Goneril poisons his sister. This is partly Lear's fault, who spoils them but first makes them pawns in a word game where the ability to verbalize one's love is more important than one's true feelings. The sentence that was meted out to the old king was not only the death of his two eldest daughters but also being separated from his youngest (and favorite) daughter, Cordelia, after banishing her for not participating in a rhetoric game with his sisters. When Lear is finally united with her, he and Cordelia are held in a prison and she is hanged. Lear also falls victim to Regan and Goneril's heartless plans to usurp his former power: blatantly through their inheritance and.