Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Crazy?
So we talked about this in class, but I don't think we really had the opportunity to really discuss it. When do you think that Lear became crazy? Was he crazy at the outset of the play, or did he become crazy at a specific point later on? At the end of Act 4, is Lear crazier than ever or is he sane?
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For the majority of the play, from the beginning to the end, Lear is crazy. There are several times where he has consciousness, but I believe he was lost from the beginning.
Yes, at one point in Act 4, he recognizes that he might be crazy. However, this in no way allows us to make the assumption that he must no longer be crazy or that he was never crazy. The first step to curing oneself is to recognize that you have a problem.
Remember it is in blindness that the characters see, as fools they are wise, and in madness that there is reason.
By this, then perhaps it is at Lear's most insane moments that he finds truth, like during the storm. The same went for Gloucester. He can see clearly now his eyes are gone. Well, Lear can think clearly now his mind is gone.
Or he has Alzheimer's up to the point in Act 4 where he admits he has Alzheimer's, then he is miraculously cured!
Has anyone ever heard that expression, "Sorry, I got a little crazy there" ? I think that Lear could claim this. People have moments where they get upset about something or things they have done finally catch up to them and they have bouts of craziness...but then something else happens and they come down off their high and realize how crazy they were being. This doesn't make them insane--it means that they lost it for a bit, but now they have returned to their senses. I think in the beginning, he was crazy. But I don't know, maybe he really has come full circle. I think we need to finish the play before we render a final judgement. Even then we may never agree.
It just seemed like there for a bit he was acting awful sane for a crazy person.
Lear's insanity is punctuated by fleeting moments of lucidity instead of the other way around...he is undoubtedly losing it--maybe sensing his impending dementia prompted his irrational decision to divvy up his kingdom in the first place. He had a rather tilted sense of his own importance as evidenced in demand for a quantitative measure of his daughters' love and his belief that he needed 100 knights in his entourage.
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