Upon reading the play King Lear, the theme of “blindness” certainly does interest me. When I say “blindness” I mean it when we analyze the characteristics of Lear. It is very clear that even as a king, Lear has a very poor judgment of people’s character. I would have expected him to have the wisdom to complement his role as the king, yet that did not happen. When I started reading the play, I find it rather disappointing that Lear is portrayed as someone who is blind morally, meaning he fails to see the kindness and good in people. This is very obvious when he decides to test his daughters’ love for him. Love test? Would we ever ask our parents how much they love us? Or did our parents ever ask us how much we love them? Yet, here we have the Lear, the king testing his daughters. In my opinion, this is rather foolish because I strongly feel that love should never be measured. When we love someone, it is sincere and has nothing to do with material. However, as we know, unconditional love is not what Lear wants, he accepts Goneril and Regan confession and rejects Cordelia’s plain and honest confession. Here, it clearly shows that Lear is being morally blind because he couldn’t see through Goneril and Regan’s intention in their confessions. What really interest me as the reader is that he disowns the honest Cordelia. When I ask myself why Lear would do that, I realize that there are some people who just prefer the exterior and not the inside of things. We tend to judge things based on what we see on the surface. So in short, in my opinion, Lear’s character can best be used when trying to implant moral values into our students. Don’t you think so?
