King Lear, Act 3

For this act, you should respond to ONE of the reader-response questions. Your answer should be 300+ words.

Your responses must be posted no later than Wednesday, April 15, at the beginning of our class period.

1. Read Gloucester’s lines beginning with line 171 in Act III, scene 4. It starts “Canst thou blame him?” It then continues to express Gloucester’s terrible hurt at the thought that Edgar, his beloved son, has betrayed him. Of course, the dramatic irony is palpable because Edgar is standing right there, but that is an analytical discussion for another time.
Here, I would like you to consider the human emotional response to rejection and betrayal—especially by those you love. It is perhaps the most painful of experiences. Only grief after a death competes with it. What is it like? What does it do to a person? Consider deeply what Gloucester (and Lear, and Edgar, and Cordelia, and Kent) is experiencing. Consider the pain that they are living with.

2. Write about the scene in which Gloucester’s eyes are plucked out. Obviously, it serves the symbolic purpose of allowing Gloucester to “see” [the truth] better after he has been blinded. But the scene is also graphically violent. Even when Oedipus gouges out his eyes at the end of Sophocles’ play, it occurs off-stage. Consider the place of graphic violence in art. What purpose does this particular incident serve? Is it gratuitous, or is it necessary for the meaning of the play? What about slasher films? What about Grand Theft Auto? When is there a place for graphic violence? When is there not?

3. Write the back story of the first servant—the one who attempts to defend Gloucester and is killed for it. Why does he do this? Imagine motivation that would be strong enough. Does it come from his past, or simply from loyalty to the king? We’ve had trouble getting our heads around this selfless and single-minded loyalty. Is Kent a stooge or a hero? In this response try, if it has been hard for you, to envision the loyalty of the servant as a noble characteristic. Try to put yourself in his place and perhaps see the beauty of loyalty.

4. The storm is an example of the pathetic fallacy (fancy term for personification). It represents Lear’s madness. Below, read the poem “Storm Warnings” by Adrienne Rich. It does a similar thing. Write a short piece—a scene of a short story, for instance, or a poem--in which you use some aspect of nature to represent or to mirror a human emotional event. If you’re not feeling creative, a personal reflection will also work nicely.

Storm Warnings
Adrienne Rich

The glass has been falling all the afternoon,
And knowing better than the instrument
What winds are walking overhead, what zone
Of gray unrest is moving across the land,
I leave the book upon a pillowed chair (5)
And walk from window to closed window, watching
Boughs strain against the sky

And think again, as often when the air
Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting,
How with a single purpose time has traveled (10)
By secret currents of the undiscerned
Into this polar realm. Weather abroad
And weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction.

Between foreseeing and averting change (15)
Lies all the mastery of elements
Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter.
Time in the hand is not control of time,
Nor shattered fragments of an instrument
A proof against the wind; the wind will rise, (20)
We can only close the shutters.

I draw the curtains as the sky goes black
And set a match to candles sheathed in glass
Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine
Of weather through the unsealed aperture. (25)
This is our sole defense against the season;
These are the things that we have learned to do
Who live in troubled regions.