Throughout King Lear, the themes and messages of the play are communicated to the audience using a devastating combination of irony; reversal of situation and fortune; and paradox, highlighting the heartbreaking truth of the futility of human existence presented in the play. This method is particularly effective because it highlights the inconstant nature of the course of events. How one interprets this depends on whether or not one believes in the existence of gods in the play: if supernatural beings exist in the world of the play and control events, then Gloucester's lines: "Like flies for wanton boys, are we facing the world of the play? gods, / They kill us for their sport" may be true, and if so, it reduces the bleakness of the final picture because at least the gods derived some pleasure from their "sport" and there is some semblance of meaning to events. However, there is ample evidence to suggest that these gods do not exist: belief in such beings is heavily satirized and seen as a weakness and an excuse by characters who do not believe in higher powers. Edmund says of Gloucester's creed: Say no. to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay “It is the excellent stupidity of the world, that when we are sick of fortune, we often blame the excess of our own behavior. our disasters, the sun, the moon and the stars; as if we were wicked by necessity, fools by celestial constraint? An admirable escape from a master whore, to put his goatish temperament to the charge of a star! (I.ii.109-18) If this view is believed, and it is very convincing, then the sentence for humanity is heavy. If there are no gods to direct events, then the evil of the play is directly and entirely the result of human actions, and Lear's tirade against sex in Act IV Scene VI rings true. Lear says that it is not adultery that is the problem, because "Gloucester's bastard son / Was kinder to his father than my daughters / Got between the legal sheets" (lines 113-15), but l The sexual act itself, simply because it results in the continuation of the human race, and because the very nature of humans is evil, is a bad thing: "But the gods inherit the girdle, / Au- underneath lies the whole demon” (lines 124-25). Procreation is evil because it perpetuates the cycle of futility that is human life. A third view might be that there are gods, but they have no influence on the world. This is supported by Edgar's phrase: "The gods are just and our vices pleasant / Make instruments to torment us" (V.iii.170-1). One reading of this sentence might be to interpret "fair" as not interfering, especially since there is no sense of justice in the play, and so the meaning of the sentence is that "our "pleasant vices", that is to say human sins, are solely responsible for our suffering. This view has many of the same implications as the second: belief in a divine presence that has ultimate control over events is a way of excusing the actions of a fundamentally evil species. In fact, it is this willingness to accept many of the events in the play as predetermined or fatal that allows many of the atrocities to occur. When the servant stands up to Cornwall in Act III scene vii by saying, "Hold your hand, my Lord" (line 71), it is the first time anyone has stood up and said, "stop" . So far there has been a worrying lack of human interventionin these terrible events, and with the actions of Albany and Edgar later in the play, it provides some hope for the state of human existence, even if the overwhelming picture is one of sadness. and suffering. The question of whether or not there are gods in the play who intervene in the events is fundamental to the power of the play and profoundly affects any reading of meaning. I believe that there are no gods in the world of the play and that this increases the power of instances of irony; reversal of situation and fortune; and paradox in the play, because these are therefore entirely consequences of human actions. This increases the tragedy because ironic incidents are often partly the fault of the victim of irony, the paradoxes reflect directly on the nature of human existence; and any overthrow results from human actions and can therefore be meaningfully interpreted rather than dismissed as the whim of the gods. Thus, in the many occasions in the play where the characters appeal to the gods to help them in one way or another, there is an underlying irony because in fact their prayers will not be answered. The most striking example is found in the final scene of the play, when Albany says of Cordelia: "The gods defend her!" and the stage direction which immediately follows reads: “Return Lear, with Cordelia dead in his arms.” Too bad for the gods who defend it! This is undoubtedly the most devastating and dark moment in the play, and in all of literature, particularly because of this irony. Perhaps the greatest irony of the play is the parallel rehabilitation of Lear and Gloucester from the status of "foolish old [men]" to that of men of insight. The irony is that by the time they have gained this understanding, they are both incapable of using it in any meaningful way and cannot change the course of events: in the larger context of the play's end result, they could and it didn't happen at all. This irony implicitly hides a great paradox: to use power, one must have a clear and uncorrupted vision; but the very fact of having power obscures and corrupts one's vision in such a way that one is unable to use that power virtuously. This is illustrated by the fact that Lear only gains his insight after abandoning all the trappings of power and experiencing being an "unaccommodated man" (III.iv.101), but having been reduced to This level, he can't use his insight for good. Similarly, Gloucester only "sees" after having his eyes gouged out, he "stumbled when [he] saw" (IV.i.20) and being blind cannot do anything useful with it. his clarity of vision. This ironic incongruity between insight and power is demonstrated again in the Fool and Kent, who are both very astute but cannot use this trick because of their positions: they have no power. The fool's job is to tell Lear when he is wrong that he is the only person Lear allows to do so and to interpret the events in a witty and amusing way. The tragedy is that Lear never listens to the advice of fools, precisely because he is a buffoon. There is a great bond of affection between the king and his fool, but ultimately the fool is powerless, and it is a harsh irony that Lear never takes his fool seriously. Kent is once again a just, honorable and courageous character, who demonstrates unfailing love. for his king when he defies his banishment to help him, but like the fool, Lear never really listens to him, first because his judgment is tainted by anger and wounded pride, then because he is a servant. Kent never lets Lear "see", even when he is put in prisonto highlight the betrayal of Lear's daughters, and is ultimately never fully reconciled with the king because Lear dies before he can realize that it was Kent in the guise of Caius who was so devoted and such a "good boy ". Lear thinks that Caius is "dead and rotten" (V.iii.285), which adds to Kent's tragedy but also to Lear's, for it is another element of the king's unresolved confusion at the time of his death. The fool passes by without having made any impression on the events of the play, and Kent's only action is to establish liaison with Cordelia, which ultimately results in her death as she would not have been in the kingdom otherwise, though Although his return makes Lear momentarily happy and provides him with an element of hope, this quickly disappears and only accentuates the already immense tragedy of the final scenes. Their two roles are therefore essentially futile and unfulfilled. Kent and the Fool simply disappear when their service is no longer needed: when Lear begins his journey of self-realization, he no longer needs the Fool to comment on events because he begins to see through himself, and after Lear's death Kent has nothing left to live for, in the same way that after Cordelia's death Lear has none, and Kent leaves to respond to the death of his "master ". Lear's final appearance is marked by overwhelming confusion and anguish, and tragically, he dies without having resolved his problem. This. He asks what all this waste is for, all this suffering, and dies before he can find an answer; if there is an answer to be found. This is the final irony of the piece: it was all for nothing; suffer for the sake of suffering. The situation is made even worse with the series of reversals of fortune in this final scene. There seems to be some hope when Edgar kills his brother, as Edmund appears to have recanted and Cordelia and Lear might be saved. However, when Lear enters with Cordelia "dead in his arms", it immediately erases hope and once again highlights the horrible injustice of the play. This shows that Edmond did not really recant at all; but that he remained true to his destructive nature to the end and played to gain time for his order to kill Cordelia and Lear to be carried out, saying: "But go on, / you look like have something more to say. The irony here is that Edgar and Albany are convinced by this act, and most of Edgar's two long speeches are overly complex and unnecessarily prolong a story that we already know, having played it for us on stage. This does Edmund's work for him, and it is indeed ironic that Edgar and Albany are apparently so willing to delay; they completely forget about Lear and Cordelia until Kent reminds them and Albany's reaction is terribly stupid: "It's a good thing we forgot!" This is a manifestation of Edmund Burke's assertion that "all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing", and given the universal nature of events of the play, it suggests that humanity is all too ready to “do nothing.” ".There is a second reversal when the "phantom normal ending" of Albany (V.iii.295-304), which suggests that the state of the kingdom will return to normal and that "All friends will taste / The wages of their virtue, and all enemies / The cup of their merits" (302-4), is completely destroyed by Lear's tormented reminder that there has been no justice at all, because "[his] poor fool is hanged! These reversals in the final scene heighten the drama, as hope is suggested and then cruelly snatched away. Although Lear laments the fickle nature of fate, asking the question of Cordelia's death: "Why a dog, a horse,,.