In the play King Lear, the darkest tragedies, by Shakespeare, blindness is a major factor of all tragic events that occur in the play. Blindness represents Lear's and Gloucester's the inability to see the truth, which eventually leads to Lear's insanity and Gloucester's literal blindness. Lear and Gloucester make the same mistake by favoring the unloving children over the loving ones due to their blindness in the face of truth. They realize the cruelty of life and the insignificance of human comparing to nature after they lost almost everything they've ever had; yet they redeem love and humanity, the most valuable things that they can ever ask for. The parallel can be easily drawn between Lear and Gloucester.
Oedipus had no idea that his real parents were Laius and Jocasta. He was so blind that he got mad at anyone who was foolish enough to suggest such an idea. As soon as Oedipus knew and actually accepted the truth, he blinded himself. Just as Tiresias was blind and open to the truth, so was Oedipus. Oedipus was also physically blind.
This action leads to him being considered a tragic hero. Creon’s human flaw of arrogance causes him to ignore reasoning and advice and listen only to his own thoughts. He states, "My voice is the one voice giving orders in this city". He is afraid to go back on his word because it will hurt his pride and he is afraid that it will cause him to lose power with his subjects. This action causes him to lose everyone that he loves.
Edgar is also blind to what Edmund is telling him. Blindness is a common theme and occurrence in the play. Characters in King Lear become blind from their pride, by being gullible, and due to their vulnerability. Lear's blindness towards his two daughters, Goneril and Regan, is shown in Act 1, Scene 1, when he is splitting up his land amongst all of his daughters. Goneril and Regan both lie to Lear and tell him that they love him so much, when really all they want is his kingdom.
“Which of you shall we say doth love us most” Act 1, Scene 1, Line 52. Through this, both King Lear’s and Gloucester’s rage and rashness can be seen, resulting in them both loosing sight of what is important. Despite this, their weak characteristics have a small influence on their tragedy and suffering. After King Lear bestows all his possessions to his daughters, rather than being grateful, Goneril and Regan’s lust for power causes them to turn on their father. In Act 2, Scene 4, Goneril and Regan diminish his retinue, disregard his authority and Goneril instructs her servants to treat King Lear with the utmost disrespect.
This truthfulness however lands her in a bad place as she is disowned by her father for not professing her love. Gonerill and Regan are the complete opposite here as they show dishonesty in lying about how much each of them loves their father. As soon as their father has given them their share of inheritance they become ungrateful and no longer care for their father. ‘And in good time you gave it.’ Here Regan tells Lear that he took his time
Philip then suffers from a heart attack, him and Sylvia confront each other and Philip then collapses; Sylvia is then cured of her paralysis. From the very beginning of the play Miller makes it clear for us to see the tension between them both and what didn’t help matters was the fact they know knew how to communicate like your average couple. Sylvia felt as though she had been neglected from the love she believed she would receive from Gellburg; whereas Gellburg was completely unaware of the way Sylvia felt because he was too absorbed in his own world and job, but more importantly he thought Sylvia deserved much more than he could possibly give her. One of the key issues throughout this scene is forgiveness. Gellburg confesses to Sylvia with pure emotion “I feel I did this to you” which is showing that he wants to be forgiven and it also states that he is finally accepting that he is mostly to blame for what has gone on.
So the true causes of evil are her father trapping her and keeping her away from people and men so long that she literally ends up crazy. Her father was apparently a cruel old man who never wanted his daughter to find true love and move away from him. “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such.” (48) “So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.” (49, 50) These two quotes show that her father was a real evil man who never saw any man well enough for his daughter and by the time she was thirty she was still single and really did not have a clue what she had been through and that she
Other views led to a myriad of ineffective treatments that were often torturous to the patients including: fever therapy, sleep therapy, gas therapy, electroconvulsive or electroshock treatment, and prefrontal leucotomy (Burton, 2012). Worse than these more modern therapies, in antiquity many of
He cheats on her, and when she finds out, it seems he could not care less. But Daisy cannot even leave him because she is too scared, and has no one to run to. Through Daisy’s situation, Fitzgerald is expressing that even when people are treated horribly, they still rely on wealth and high status. Even in society today, we see people deteriorating because of their goals to meet society’s standards. The neglect from her husband causes Daisy to wilt, much like the flower if it were treated harshly.