King Lear Essay Rationale
Zain Qadri
English 30-1
C.Gray
For my multimedia project I opted to do a formal essay about one of the several themes of King Lear. My decision to do an essay came because I am extremely comfortable with voicing my thoughts and opinions through a basic essay format as opposed to something media related. I chose to write my essay around the theme of power. I chose power because, it is a theme that can easily be related to out of the text. For example, the power struggle going on in Libya regarding the leader can easily be related to King Lear and used as proof to support an idea. Furthermore power is general enough theme that it can be approached from several directions. For example, for essential essay questions I could approach power directly and talk about the definition of power in the context of King Lear. Another approach can be struggle related to power. More so, power is a general theme that usually occurs within most texts in one form or another. With that said, it is extremely easy to use evidence from other text to support my ideas from King Lear.
My essay is structured around proving the point that the pursuit for power often exposes unforeseen challenges. To prove this point I chose King Lear's daughters, Gloucester's sons, along with King Lear himself and referenced the struggles they had to go through while trying to obtain and maintain power. King Lear's daughters struggled amongst each other. Each with the exception of Cordelia were trying to belittle one another to obtain the highest portion of land. Gloucester's illegitimate son Edmund had a problem with the real son Edgar. Edmund wanted the power which right fully belong to Edgar virtue of birth right. Edmund tried to eliminate Edgar in order to obtain the title and power that Gloucester had. Lastly, King Lear's internal struggles after realizing that his power was gone along with the land he handed over to his daughters. For each of the characters I chose a couple instances which displayed their challenges and conflicts and referenced it appropriately.
I decided to go with the basic five paragraph format for a specific reason. While I could have easily made a separate paragraph for each event I referenced from the text, I felt that it would be stronger to have them condensed in the same paragraph because they were being used to prove the same point. For example, my second paragraph references the three sisters and their struggles. That paragraph is used solely to prove the power struggles within the pursuit for power. The next paragraph referenced Gloucester's sons. That paragraph is used solely to prove the point of betrayal. Finally, the fourth paragraph which references King Lear's actions is there solely to prove the point of the misconception of power and the illusion power brings with it. To me it did not seem appropriate at all to split from this format and extend my essay into possibly an eight to ten paragraph essay.
Personally, I believe that the essay meets up to standards in terms of exploring and explaining one of the several themes of King Lear. It approaches the topic of power from three different perspectives. First, the struggles related with power. Second, betrayal resulting because of power. Lastly, the illusion of power and the illusion created through power. Each perspective is backed up with at least two references from text and in some cases a personal connection I have from my experiences.