King Lear

I have a difficult time in reading King Lear. Mostly because I am not used to the unique language of William Shakespeare. The language in the play is the main problems I faced when reading the play and I'm glad that Dr. Edwin spent much time to look into the story together with us. This really drives us closer to the author's point of view in describing the plot and the characters.

There are many animal imageries used in the play. While we read the play, we are advised to carefully focus and think of the animal imageries used in some contents. For examples: "the hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, That it's had it head off by it young." Cuckoo is a kind of bird that usually lay its egg in another bird's nest. When the small cuckoo bird hatch, it will kill all the other small birds in the nest so it will be fully fed by the mother bird. As a young cuckoo, it can grow into bigger size than the mother bird. By this time, it will bite off the neck of the bird that fed it al the time. Thus, we can see that the nature of the anima is closely related to the personality of the characters portrayed. This line is indicating Goneril and Regan as evil and cruel daughters who in return harm their father for all the goodness he has given them.

We need to learn about the characters mostly through the animal imageries just like the example given above. And there are still many parts that I need to work closely to really understand the details in this play.