The King’s Storm- A Point of No Return

Shakespeares King Lear examines the governing of betrayal and the awful costs paid by its victims. Nowhere in the play are these costs more apparent than in those scenes in which Lear and his exiled companions find themselves caught in the midst of a thunder storm unsheltered. As King, Lear collective the basic assumptions of monarchy, wholeness being that the universe is ordered check to a divine logic. Within this ideological construct, natural phenomena works as the generate of God.Therefore, thunderstorms, earthquakes, and floods are all extensions of Gods judgment- Biblical examples include the remnant of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Great Flood, the Parting of the Red Sea, etc., etc. Though King Lear is inured in pre-Christian Britain, the dynamic enshrined in these examples operates here as intumesce- the immoral shall be punished and the moral shall be quited. This order of due punishment and reward is shocked when Lear is betrayed by his ungrateful daughters, Regan and Goneril. The ensuing storm is a facial expression of this order overthrown, and is as nonable for its symbolic function as it is for its accept effect on King Lear.Just as a storm depart cover the suns rays, many of the casings left in the storm energise been forced to cover or mask their true, righteous tempers. Kent and Edgar twain don the apparel and manners of unlearned beggars in order to dish up those they serve in a time of crisis. Lear similarly adopts the apparel of insaneness, constant of gravitationgh unlike the previously mentioned characters, he does so by compulsion preferably than artifice. For Kent and Edgar, these transformations arent permanent, as the indignity symbolized by the storm does non conquer them. hardly for Lear, the storm is the last stand for his sanity. Hes simply ineffective to think of his daughters betrayal, for that way Madness lies (Act III, scene 4, line 21).Another interesting pair between the nature of the storm and that of L ears madness can be drawn here. A storm is by definition the release of fold energies, energies that either implode or combust but will not dissipate. As the horrible knowledge of his misjudgments dawns on Lear, this knowledge brings the form of neurotic energies which must either implode as madness or explode as acts of revenge.Perhaps if Lear were a younger man, he tycoon have tried and true at revenge, but madness is the seemingly inevitable result of such extreme misfortune at such advanced age. Just as the storm explodes with its torrential rains and its deafening thunder, Lear begins his implosion in counterpoint, descending into madness. As he cannot match the explosive rage of the storm with an act of revenge, he must mount an equally powerful attack on his own psyche.His painful sensation runs so deep by this point that the literal gales cannot compare to the tempest in his Mind (III, 4, 12). Pragmatically, implosion serves not only the purpose of dispersing irrepr essible psychoneurotic energies, but also sets up a bulwark through which pull ahead pains cannot penetrate. Thus, the aforementioned Tempest in Lears Mind / Doth from his Sense take all Feeling else / Save what beats there, Filial Ingratitude (III, 4, 12-14).Viewed from a different perspective, the storm can be seen as a gainsay to Lear- can he show the strength and resolve thats undeniable to right the wrongs that have been done to him? His answer to that challenge is a echo no. Though at some points he seems resolute, as when he calls out to the storm to Pour on, I will endure, his ensuing madness betrays such exclamations (III, 4, 16).Lear does endure, but only behind the aforementioned harbor of implosion, a purgatorial state in which neither engagement with reality nor finis is possible. Its only a little later that he effectively renounces what was left of his regal spirit, crying, -Take Physic, Pomp/ Expose thy self to feel what Wretches feel,/ That thou mayst shake the Superflux to them/ And shew the Heavens more Just (Lear, III, 4, 33-36). Though this line could be interpreted as a positive call for princely humility in another context, here it is nothing more than a slightly veiled admission of surrender. In lowering himself to the level of a common Wretch, he does not take dignity with him, but leaves it a memory of his once-glorious past.When envisioning the effects of the storm on Lear, one must consider not only the storm in itself, but the circumstances in which he experiences it. If he had experienced such a storm in even a poor peasants cottage, the deposed king might have been able to clutch onto a final shred of imperial composure and dignity. But wooly in the wilderness, Lear realizes that he has truly lost control of a land he once ruled, and of himself as well for that matter. To build a shelter for oneself from cold and wind and rain is at bottom an attempt to control the elements, to moderate their rule over ones life.Lea r has, by this point, locomote so far from his earlier aggrandisement that he no longer has this basic semblance of control to shield him from the whims of nature. The former king has effectively dismounten from the highest station one could have to the very lowest. This extreme transformation finds its expression in the extreme nature of the storm. It is not a polite storm but one in which Sheets of Fire,Bursts of horrid Thunder,and Groans of roaring Wind and Rain paint a construe of hell on Earth (Kent, III, 2, 46-47).With these symbolic cues, one is meant to understand that Lear has fallen from the paradise of his court to the hell of a stormy wilderness. His fall bears some resemblance to the Biblical story of decade and Eve who were tempted by the praise and promises of Satan into actions forbidden by God and thus were expelled from paradise. Accordingly, the idea of devils, or Fiends, permeates the speech of Edgar in his guise as Old Tom, the beggar, and though its never explicitly stated, these Fiends are likely the betrayers Edmund, Goneril, Regan and Cornwall. The flattery of these betrayers preys on the pleasant faith of their victims, just as the snake preyed on that of Adam and Eve.But whereas Adam and Eve understood the consequences of their actions, Lear does not, and therefore his actions cannot be considered sinful, only misguided. So fittingly, it is not through the will of God but by the machinations of his betrayers, that Lear is sentenced to a wilderness, the character of which would usually be reserved for criminals and evil-doers. It is a realm in which, according to Edmund, revenging Gods/ Gainst Parricides did all the Thunder Bend (II, 1, 46-47). Thus, Lear is unjustly submitted to the thunderbolts that should be reserved for his betrayers. So it is that the storm appears at this critical time in the play as a manifestation of a judgmental wrath that has been rendered impotent.This is perhaps the low-water mark in the fortunes of the righteous, when all are gathered a collective of exiles, and the plans of the pixilated have yet to begin their slow unraveling. The spaces normally reserved for the righteous (the royal courts) are occupied by the wicked, and those normally reserved for the wicked (the stormy wilderness) are occupied by the righteous. The hand of judgment seems to have been momentarily confused. At the conclusion of the play, Albany attempts to set things back in their rightful order, despite great losses already suffered, stating All Friends shall experiment/ The Wages of their Virtue, and all Foes/ The Cup of their Deservings (V, 3, 295-301).Exposed to the ravages of storm, such a sense of nicety seems unattainable to Lear, an ideal lost in an age of treachery. The storm serves as his personal point of no return, after such a fall from grace it seems impossible that he could rise again. And he cannot- the storm is Lears crucifixion, though he still lived after its passing, something in hi m recognizes that as he inadvertently birthed the chaos that engulfs him, he must die for it to pass.