The bond between a father and a daughter stands as one of the strongest emotional bonds present within many families. From the moment their little girls emerge from the womb to the moment their young women marry, the father reigns as the head of the household, the controller, and the protector. Though this rings true for many families, sometimes Daddy’s little girls make all the rules. They possess the ability to acquire what they want through their incessant whining, crying, and batting of their eyelashes. Daddy’s little girls assert control over most situations and possess negotiating skills that rival those of the best Wall Street stockbrokers. Pulling at Daddy’s heart, Daddy’s little girls play their fathers like puppets. Daddy appears as the head, but everyone knows who reigns as the boss. Though a father takes on the leadership role as the male figure head of the family, the role of protector makes the father-daughter bond particularly strong. Fathers protect their little girls from all harm so they proclaim. What happens when something shatters the respect and trust within the father-daughter relationship? What happens if the father hurts the daughter or vice versa? William Shakespeare’s King Lear and Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres delve into the subject of father-daughter relationships. Both works of literature carefully examine the father-daughter theme, but, in King Lear, Lear receives the sympathy and not his sinister, evil daughters, Goneril and Regan, while in A Thousand Acres Larry Cook emerges as the villain, the daughters, Ginny and Rose, emerge as the heroines.
In every family resides the favorite. The favorites get eve…
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…es stand as the ones that survive through the storm that rages in their lives. Although some of the heroes ultimately die, Lear of King Lear and Ginny and Rose of A Thousand Acres establish themselves as examples of total self-respect. Though people disrespect them, they persevere and live their lives to the best of their abilities emerging as the only true, heroic characters.
Works Cited
Harbage, Alfred. ” King Lear: An Introduction.” Shakespeare: The Tragedies: A Collection of Critical Essays.
Englewood: Prentice-Hall, 1964: 113-22.
Knight, Wilson. “King Lear and the Comedy of the Grotesque.” Shakespeare: The Tragedies: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood:
Prentice-Hall, 1964: 123-38.
Shakespeare, William. King Lear. New York: Scholastic, 1970.
Smiley, Jane. A Thousand Acres. Thorndike: Thorndike Press, 1991.
King Lear as a Commentary on Greed
King Lear as a Commentary on Greed
In Chapter 4 of a book titled Escape from Freedom, the famous American psychologist Erich Fromm wrote that “Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction” (Fromm 98). Fromm realized that avarice is one of the most powerful emotions that a person can feel, but, by its very nature, is an emotion or driving force that can never be satisfied. For, once someone obtains a certain goal, that person is not satisfied and continues to strive for more and more until that quest leads to their ultimate destruction. For this reason, authors have embraced the idea of greed in the creation of hundreds of characters in thousands of novels. Almost every author has written a work centered around a character full of avarice. Ian Fleming’s Mr. Goldfinger, Charles Dickens’ Scrooge, and Thomas Hardy’s John D’Urberville are only a few examples of this attraction. But, perhaps one of the best examples of this is found in William Shakespeare’s King Lear. Edmund, through his speech, actions, and relationships with other characters, becomes a character consumed with greed to the point that nothing else matters except for the never-ending quest for status and material possessions.
Edmund, the bastard son of Gloucester, embodies the idea of avarice from the very beginning of the play almost until the end. In fact, Edmund seems to become more and more greedy as the production progresses. When Edmund is first introduced in person on stage, after a short exposition of his character by Gloucester and Kent in the first scene, the audience immediately finds Edmund engaged in a plot to strip his father’s inheritance from his…
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…gain his freedom from this addiction. And only through his life and death does Shakespeare paint a picture to which anyone can relate and a picture on which everyone must act.
Works Cited and Consulted
“Fromm, Erich.” The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations. CD-ROM. New York: Columbia UP, 1998.
Harbage, Alfred. ” King Lear: An Introduction.” Shakespeare: The Tragedies: A Collection of Critical Essays.
Englewood: Prentice-Hall, 1964: 113-22.
Knight, Wilson. “King Lear and the Comedy of the Grotesque.” Shakespeare: The Tragedies: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood:
Prentice-Hall, 1964: 123-38.
Shakespeare, William. King Lear. New York: Scholastic, 1970.
Shakespeare, William. “King Lear: A Conflated Text.” The Norton Shakespeare. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York:
W.W. Norton