I know I haven't posted in a while but I'll make up for it, I really will. I've got a lot of posts planned that I just haven't written out yet, so be excited.
We finished King Lear the tragedy as a class last week and I was surprised that though it calls itself a tragedy and everyone dies in the end it really isn't that bad of an ending. Well, okay it is that bad but I went away from this book feeling very satisfied. Shakespeare really took a different turn from Hamlet or Othello or Romeo and Juliet with this story. In the end it feels like everyone got what was coming to them and I felt like the story really was finished. This differs from Othello because Iago, the bad guy, doesn't die in the end and the characters' lives just keep on going. And in Romeo and Juliet the two of them die and then what? They're dead, that's it; there doesn't seem to be any more to the story or the world around it. In Hamlet, though Hamlet avenges his father he dies too so how is everything going to work out for anyone? Everyone who matters is dead and the story is over.
But in King Lear I feel like those who died either deserved their punishment or they fulfilled their duty or they were justified in the end because they repented. Shakespeare also left some good guys alive, guys who could pick up the pieces of the tragedy and turn it around and make a new world livable.
King Lear, the play, was very pleasing to me. I look back on it and tell myself what Dr. Burton told us: that I should read it again later in life. If just to try and understand it more, this play would be very useful to go back to and study out and learn from. I never thought I'd like a tragedy because none of them caught my fancy before, but King Lear is different.
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