Francine Prose loved to talk about the
symbolism of the eyes in Shakespeare’s King
Lear and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Rather
than focus on the parallels between Oedipus
and Lear, I will focus purely on
the use of the eyes as a symbol within Lear. Still, I am interested in thinking
about if any legitimate parallels exist between Oedipus and the Duke of
Gloucester, both of whom have their eyes put out (perhaps the Gloucester’s
adultery somehow connects to Oedipus’ incest?). I believe the connections may
be tenuous.
Anyway, some
context: King Lear is about an aging king who decides to split his kingdom
between his daughters. He asks them to tell him how much they love him in order
to decide how much of the kingdom they deserve. Two daughters expound upon
their undying love for him in a completely disingenuous. One daughter is honest
and tells him that she loves him because he is her father. He banishes her and
goes to live with his other daughters. They mistreat him horribly and he leaves
to wander the heaths in the middle of a tempest. Throughout the play, Lear
realizes how horribly wrong he was to trust the empty praise of his two
daughters. And very often this conflict between truth and perception or
deception is expressed with the use of the eyes as a symbol. The eyes also
appear in other contexts with other characters, but with the same basic
significance.
The first major
use of eyes and vision as a symbol appears after Lear rejects his daughter
Cordelia. After Lear declares her banishment, blind to the fact that she is the
one most deserving of his love, his friend Kent urges him “See better,
Lear”(Act1,Sc1). This associates Lear’s unwillingness to see his daughter’s
worth to literal blindness. Gloucester’s inability to truly judge which of his
children truly loves him is too associated with literal blindness. Walking on
the heath, Gloucester meets his son, but fails to recognize him, only seeing
him as “Poor Tom.” Gloucester also fails to see which of his sons really cares
for him. But as Foster tells us, sometimes characters can only truly see when
they have been struck blind. Much as Oedipus did, Gloucester is only able to
discern the truth once he has lost his physical sight. Gloucester recognizes
this, saying “I stumbled when I saw”( Act 4, Sc1). Just after acknowledging his
improved perception of the truth after his blindness, Gloucester admits that he
has wronged his rightful son, crying “O dear son Edgar/ The food of thy abused
father’s wrath;/ Might I but live to see thee in my touch,/ I’d say I had eyes
again!”(Act 4, Sc1). Throughout Lear,
the eyes are intimately and inextricably involved with the truth.
As mentioned, vision and eyes come up multiple times in King Lear. They play a key role in the play and using the iambic pentameter it seems that they are even emphasized by Shakespeare to be viewed as very important. Vision means one thing at the surface, but something deeper, since according to Foster it can be considered a symbol as it comes up many times throughout the play. It seems hard to define what the deeper meaning of a symbol like that is and I had the same problem when reading my book. In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley a drug of the name soma comes up many times, but I was not able to figure out its deeper or second-level meaning, which was obviously present due to the emphasis on it. I find it very difficult to find the deeper meaning and analyze what vision means on a deeper level. Here in King Lear does not seem to go away from its common usage, which Foster emphasized that symbols have the tendency to mean similar things in different pieces of literature. the vision is a force driving his towards the wrong decisions, as his eyes told him to pick the fake loving daughters. Maybe that makes King Lear's lack of a clear and perfect vision a symbol, maybe it is a sort of anti-symbol as it represent the opposite of what it usually does, which strongly deviates from what Foster claimed.It seems that the presence of Vision and Eyes so many times in the play increase the deeper level meaning of the play, maybe connecting to the theme as vision does not prove to be the best solution for King Lear, but rather the heart and identifying true love. It seems that maybe the Vision helps to show that a string ruler or maybe even everyone should follow their heart sometimes, instead of the head, which would include vision. It seems to me a t first sight that King Lear is driven by his vision, which misguides him, but he realizes that early enough to turn around and start to follow his heart on the side, sort of the way of turning to the good side away from the evil. This makes me think that vision can be the symbol of evil or failure, which opposes the common definition of increased purity or greater understanding. I found this troubling,as it deviates from what Foster wrote and creates a different message. So what is the true purpose of the eyes and what could they mean on the deepest level of interpretation?
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