King Lear said, “A woman is a bent woman, and when she loses the ability to please her father, it is better not to be born.” These words were spoken by King Lear after the indifferent reply of the third daughter, which was a certain demand of King Lear for his daughters, but he was blinded by the superficial obedience, which was a tragedy caused by gullibility and discarding the judgment of human beings themselves.
King Lear’s unpredictable temperament, just because of a cold reply and the attitude of his daughters and will thunderous anger, such a father retains power, is a threat to their power, is also the embodiment of their insecurity. The king’s concession itself is a symbol of the breakdown of ethics, and within the royal family is a kind of chaos brought about by the shift in power and hierarchy between father and daughter.
King Lear’s tragedy is an irreparable tragedy caused by action and character. Shakespeare’s tragic characters are often tragedies caused by the inability to make timely or right choices, choices that are limited by the person himself.
The relationship between King Lear and his daughter symbolizes a relationship of control and control.
The king’s recklessness in his daughters’ house is in fact a kind of revelation, when he has power but is not responsible for it, and does not need to maintain and govern the country as he did when he was king, so the king’s power begins to expand endlessly, which is a relief for him and a threat to his daughters who are responsible for governing.
The Fool says that King Lear “thought of his daughters as mothers, which is the idea of a child.” It is also a dislocation of the ethical order.
It is a simultaneous loss of patriarchal and royal authority. One cannot escape from one’s role and still enjoy equal treatment, one cannot live in an abstract identity apart from one’s status as well as one’s responsibilities, and Shakespeare’s view is both helpless and true. As the Fool says, he is now only “Lear’s shadow.” Such a man out of order is a personification of irrationality, and what happens to him is the process of bringing him back to reality.
Lear’s character is typical of people who will be overwhelmed by anger and rationality. In the film version, King Lear knows his daughter’s callousness, and then smashes up his daughter’s house, and then returns to regret his actions because of the return of rationality. This is a typical personality flaw, in modern psychology this is a lack of love in childhood, while trying to gain attention through excessive behavior.
Foolish people think “Lear should know something about the world before he gets old.” This statement is so in line with Lear, who has been a king all his life, in a high position, and to whom everyone is submissive, how can he understand the oppression that exists between people, between rank and hierarchy, between class and class.
“Often when we suffer misfortune because of our own careless behavior, we blame our calamities on the sun, moon and stars, as if it is our destiny to be wicked and the will of heaven to be fools.”
In the storm scene, the camera shows the image of a mouse drowned by the rain, symbolizing the insignificance of man “like an urchin who catches an insect and kills us for the sake of teasing.” Nietzsche suggests that God is dead, but in Shakespeare’s portrayal, we cannot help but reflect on whether God exists, why God is unconcerned about the human condition, why there is such injustice in the world, whether God is really dead, or whether he is as close to us as we are to an ant, and we do not feel sad because we trampled an ant to death. If God existed, would he think the same way as we do.
