King Lear follows the story of the titular character Lear, an elderly king who wishes to give up his power, and attempts to divide his lands among his three daughters. However, a series of unfortunate and capricious events, brought on primarily by Lear's own vanity and anger, lead him to slowly descend into madness, pushing away his three daughters. The show turns into a bloodbath, with all three daughters and Lear dead at the end of it, with many deaths stemming from jealousy, capriciousness and futile competition among military leaders. The play, however, demonstrates Lear's journey as the end result of one's own hubris and mistaken belief in the inherent justice of the universe - in essence, rotten luck and poor circumstances end up completely destroying Lear himself.
The brutality of King Lear thoroughly emphasizes the meaninglessness and lack of justice in the world of the play, with numerous accounts of cruelty and madness demonstrating an overall bleak picture of the human experience. The final act, in particular, sees the death of nearly all of the characters we have come to know over the course of the play - Goneril poisons Regan and then stabs herself, Edmund is killed by Edgar in a duel, Kent is implied to kill himself, Cordelia dies offstage, and Lear himself simply collapses and dies in grief. Eyes are gouged out, minds are lost, and the entirety of the land is thrust into war.
The normal reaction to these events is to label King Lear a tragedy, as King Lear is undone by his own hubris and pride. However, due to the simple confusion and randomness of the events that happen in the play, it cannot be said that they are all strictly due to Lear's own mistakes. As Gloucester says at one point in the play, “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; / They kill us for their sport" (IV.i.37-38). He believes it is foolhardy to assume that nature is just, and that things happen because they should. The opposite, in fact, is true; often bad things happen to good people, and vice versa. This viewpoint is actively opposed by some in the play, including Edgar, who foolishly things that "the gods are just" (V.iii.169). The world of the play has plenty of virtue and good deeds, but these go hand in hand with death and destruction, which piles on by the end of the play to such a degree that it cannot be said that virtue wins out in the end.
King Lear, in fact, is about humanity's attempts to make sense of the chaos of life, as evidenced through the kingdom of Great Britain and Lear's attempts to rule it. The government and the kingdom are attempts to bring justice and accountability to the world; at the beginning of the play, we see that security and certainty slip away, as Lear attempts to give away his authority to others. This simple choice, brought on by his desire to give up responsibility for the throne, sets in motion the events that lead to the deaths of nearly his entire family. By giving away the throne to the evil Regan and Goneril, the land is no longer protected from the authority of a single British royal hierarchy, allowing the capriciousness and cruelty of the world to be set loose upon them. It almost seems as though the meaninglessness of the world is exacerbated by losing one's own sense of control over it - the slow disintegration of the British Empire after Lear's abdication is akin to man's slow realization that the world is not safe, it is not careful, and bad things can happen for no reason at any time.
In Act 3 of King Lear, one of Lear's defining moments occurs, as he wanders out madly into a raging storm, belting out his madness and his frustration. A very clear symbol for Lear's recognition of the meaninglessness of life, the storm makes Lear look and feel powerless in the face of nature, as he recognizes that he cannot control when bad things happen to people, and he is just as caught up in the winds of fate as everyone else. Because of his old identity as king, he is blinded to the realities of life (as symbolized by Gloucester's literal blindness) and so he only sees what he wishes to see. He simply cannot absorb whatever aspects of the human experience do not fit his worldview, for good or ill, and so he shuts it out. The world is cruel throughout the play, but it is not until the storm that Lear can see it. The storm is his only reward for trying to control his world, and so his madness compels him to join it. The essence of human frailty is made all too clear in this moment, as even the great King Lear begins to truly show his despair at the futile nature of life.
In Act 3, scene 6, the meaninglessness and absurdity of the world comes full circle, as a strange trial is set up by Lear and several others to arraign Goneril and Regan as the storm goes on. This scene is incredibly bizarre, and essentially seeks to show the actions of Lear (and man himself) as a microcosm for the whole of human experience - often, we assign importance to things in order to simply pass the time, and we wish to make sure that importance is there to make ourselves feel better about our wasting of our lives. The farcical trial, for example, is meant to be Lear's attempt to exert some impotent sense of control over his life by "punishing" his evil daughters for what they have done to him.
Nature is repeatedly seen as the master of action in King Lear, instead of any of the human characters. Lear, however, as he realizes the meaninglessness of life, begins to try and force meaning into nature, which becomes partly the cause of his madness. "O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars / Are in the poorest thing superfluous. / Allow not nature more than nature needs, / Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s" (II.iv.259-263). Railing against his daughters for their cruelty, he realizes at this moment that men are no more than animals, and no amount of reason will allow his fortunes, and the fortunes of the knights that have been taken away from him, to change for the better. By stripping away his knights and servants, Lear is stripped of his identity and dignity by the cruel nature of events. Goneril and Regan, at this point, are agents of nature, acting in their own interest, Lear being cast aside as a result.
The tragic and meaningless events of King Lear eventually drive Lear to complete and utter madness; when he comes in at the end of the play, carrying the dead body of his one loyal daughter, Cordelia, he howls in despair, completely broken by the whims of nature. We do not hear what killed Cordelia or how she died; further evidence of the meaninglessness of life in the story. There was literally no reason for Cordelia to die, but she did, robbing Lear of all he had left in the world. Seeing no reaction from those around him, Lear rages at them and wails his despair at Cordelia's death - "O, you are men of stones: / Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so / That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone forever!" (V.iii.256-258). Meanwhile, in Godot, Lear's madness can be contrasted with the relative acceptance of events that Vladimir and Estragon endure. Even when they attempt suicide, they do so with a resigned acceptance; neither of them are particularly heartbroken that their lives are about to end, likely because they never assigned meaning to their lives in the first place.
The cruelty of the final scene in King Lear demonstrates the effect that nature has over life and the people in it. It is an emotionally draining conclusion made all the more dehumanizing in that it offers no solution, no sense of peace, and no answers for the audience. As Kent sees the utterly destroyed Lear, overcome with grief and near death, he utters the phrase, "Is this the promis'd end?" This is meant to echo the sentiments of the audience at the time; this is what happens to all of us once life is through with us. Life is meaningless, and whatever control or authority we attempt to exert over it can be undone in an instant. Morality does not offer one a better life, as many times even virtuous people can be undone through the twists of fate; furthermore, nature offers no greater protection against the evil deeds of others, and people can destroy other people without any sort of karmic justice raised against them. The futility of action is demonstrated here more so than a tragic story of someone undone by their own pride; while Lear's pride is a problem that makes his troubles worse, the Aristotilian definition of a tragedy implies a restoration of order at the end. There is no such thing here; most everyone dies by Albany and Edgar, who is implied to become king at the end of the play. While someone now rules the kingdom, the order is in no way restored, as the family line is broken, most of the characters are dead, and this cycle of destruction will likely continue well through the generations.
References
Shakespeare, W. King Lear.
Stamper, J. (1960). The catharsis of King Lear. Shakespeare Survey.
