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Theme of King Lear

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Theme of King Lear
King Lear is a Shakespearean tragedy that illustrates what happens when children are consumed by greed and lose their love for their parents. This is a great tragedy that is full of injustice at the beginning and the restoring of justice towards the end. The good are misjudged as evil and the evil are accepted as good. It is not until the end of the play that the righteous people are recognized as such. There is great treachery and deceit involved in the hierarchy of English rule. The play focuses on deception, greed, cruelty, and misjudgment.

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes. The major themes are these:

Theme of justice
Theme of Madness
Theme of Good versus evil
Theme of Vision and Blindness
Theme of suffering But the other themes which helped in these themes to progress are these:

Authority versus Chaos
Reconciliation
Betrayal
Themes of Age versus Youth

Theme of justice in king lear Many themes are evident in King Lear, but perhaps one of the most prevalent relates to the theme of justice. Shakespeare has developed a tragedy that allows us to see man's decent into chaos. Although Lear is perceived as "a man more sinned against than sinning" (p.62), the treatment of the main characters encourages the reader to reflect on the presence or lack of justice in this world. The characters also vary in their inclination to view the world from either a fatalistic or moralistic point of view, depending on their beliefs about the presence or absence of a higher power. The theme of justice in relation to higher powers can be illustrated from the perspective of King Lear, Gloucester, and Edgar. When reading King Lear, it is helpful to understand the Elizabethan "Chain of Being" in which nature is viewed as order.

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