The Motif of Blindness in King Lear

In King Lear there are examples for both physical blindness and metaphorical blindness that have a central role in the play. The metaphorical blindness takes hold of both Gloucester and King Lear, as both of them have loyal and disloyal children and they are both blind to the truth, as well as the fact that they both end up disowning their loyal children and choosing the disloyal child their heir. In this case the fathers are blinded by what they would like to feel or hear from their children and choose the heir based on that, not the truth. In this case the metaphorical blindness that the men face is only undone once they have become physically blinded. In the case of Gloucester , he has his eyes physically plucked out and loses physical sight forever and Lear doesn’t realize his error until he has gone mad and they both come to realize how dearly the truth about their children has cost them. Shakespeare believed that blindness did not only mean the inability to see but was also a mental flaw which some people possess. This makes them unable to see things from a different perspective and generally leads to a shallow and narrow thinking person. In King Lear the blindness that Gloucester and King Lear face is a little of both this blindness and physical blindness and is without doubt the primary reason for the bad decisions that they made and would later regret. Due to King Lear’s position in society, he was expected to be able to tell the difference between right and wrong, and unfortunately he was unable to do so when it came to the truth of his daughters. Even though by the end of the play when King Lear’s wicked daughters locked him out in the storm and he realized how terrible they were as well as how wrong he was for thinking they were the better of the daughters all along, the damage had been done. Even though Cordelia’s lack of compliments towards the King in the beginning of the play was due to her overwhelming love and affection they she simply could not put into words, King Lear saw it differently and banished her from his kingdom. Unfortunately, once he realized this it was too late, and King Lear’s blindness ended up costing him the life of Cordelia and consequently his life as well. Gloucester ’s blindness is similar in the fact they he had to suffer legitimately when his blindness denied him the ability to see the goodness of Edgar and the wickedness of Edmund. Even though Edgar was the honest and loving son, Gloucester disowned him and wanted to kill him. Edmund plotted against them and tried to convince Gloucester with a false letter that Edgar was plotting to kill him, and Gloucester ’s blindness caused him to believe these lies, but later Edgar, disguised as Poor Tom saves his life. Gloucester was unable to mentally see when he had the physical ability, but unfortunately his ability to see the true nature of his sons happened only after his eyes were plucked out.