King Lear as a Commentary on Greed Essay -- King Lear essays

tycoon Lear as a Commentary on covetousness In Chapter 4 of a book titled Escape from Freedom, the famous Ameri faeces psychologist Erich Fromm wrote that Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an perpetual effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction (Fromm 98). Fromm realized that avarice is unrivaled 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 cheerful. 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 indite a work centered around a character full of avarice. Ian Flemings Mr. Goldfinger, Charles Dickens Scrooge, and Thomas Hardys John DUrberville are only a few examples of this attraction. But, per haps one of the best examples of this is found in William Shakespeares 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 stipulation 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 at one time finds Edmund engaged in a plot to strip his fathers inheritance from his... ...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 Columbi a 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 & Co., 1997. 2479-2553.