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

King Lear as a translation on Greed In Chapter 4 of a book call Escape from Freedom, the famous American psychologist Erich Fromm wrote that Greed is a bottomless punctuate which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without eer reaching satisfaction (Fromm 98). Fromm realized that avarice is superstar of the most mesomorphic emotions that a person can feel, but, by its really nature, is an emotion or driving force that can never be satisfied. For, once psyche obtains a certain goal, that person is not satisfied and continues to strive for more and more until that signal 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 Flemings Mr. Goldfinger, Charles Dickens Scrooge, and doubting Thomas Hardys John DUrberville are only a few examples of this attraction . But, perhaps 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 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 speckle to strip his fathers inheritance from his... ...gain his freedom from this addiction. And only through his life and demolition does Shakespeare paint a foresee to which anyone can relate and a picture on which everyone must act. Works Cited and Consulted Fromm, Eric h. The capital of South Carolina Dictionary of Quotations. CD-ROM. impudently 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.