Pain // Braylan Stringfellow

For this post, I just want to focus on a line the Gloucester said in Act 4 scene 1. He said, “Thy comforts can do me no good at all; / Thee they may hurt” (Shakespeare, lines 16-17). This just stuck out to me while I was reading. Gloucester is in some serious emotional pain. He has lost his sight and only wishes to see his son. He wants to “see” him through touch. The old man that is guiding Gloucester around tries to comfort him but he can’t. 
I have never experienced anything like this but I can relate to what Gloucester says. In times when I’m down, sometimes the best thing anyone can do for me is to leave me alone. I know that the people trying to comfort me are only trying to help but like Gloucester said, they don’t do me any good. Not really a whole lot to say here but it was something I could relate too.

I commented on Emily Otts and Ian Blair’s post

Comments

  1. Ian BlairAugust 30, 2021 at 5:01 PM

    Gloucester being beside himself is meant to tug at the heart strings of the audience I think, especially given his position and what has happened with his two sons. For all he knows at that point, Edgar is dead/being hunted as a fugitive and Edmund is a traitor who backstabbed his own family. I really think Gloucester is probably the biggest victim in the entire play besides maybe Edmund.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A House Divided//Emily Otts

The words Jesus spoke in Matthew 12 remind me so much of this play: "Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand." (Matthew 12:25) King Lear, at the end of the day, is about a family being divided multiple ways. These divisions arise over greed and hatred for one another and cause the whole family to be ruined because of it. King Lear first divides the kingdom after his daughter Cordelia does not proclaim her love to him, so he banishes her. Later, his daughters go against him for not doing as they asked, believing he is unfit and unworthy to be king, secretly plotting against him. But all of this comes to a head in Act 5. After capturing King Lear and Cordelia, Edmund plans to have them killed. You would believe the sisters would be able to work together because their plan is working, but an even greater division has risen between them. Both of them wish to have Edmund for themselves, and they plot against each o...
Read more

The Plague in Everyone// Emily Otts

     In part 4 of the Plague , Tarrou tells Rieux about how he has had the plague forever. Except, this is not the same plague as the one ravaging the town. Tarrou speaks of how his father was a lawyer who believed in the death penalty, how he saw so many people support it and be comfortable about it, and how he had to witness the executions of prisoners. He explains how this sort of mindset is a plague itself, one Tarrou had been fighting for a long time. " That's why everybody in the world looks so tired; everyone is more or less sick of plague. But that is also why some of us, those who want to get the plague out of their systems, feel such desperate weariness, a weariness from which nothing remains to set us free except death" (Camus, part 4, chapter 6). Tarrou wants to desperately not submit to such awful ways of thinking.      Tarrou does not realize it, but the plague he is talking about is sin. Everyone has it, some people give in to it and let...
Read more

The Thirst for Knowledge

     With Book Seven of Milton's Paradise Lost, Raphael is continuing his exposition on Satan's apostasy. The plan is to expose Adam and Eve to the wretched fate of those who cross God's will. The more he shed's light on the subject, however, the more Adam is inclined to ask for more information. He wants to know everything about the subject, as well as God and His creation.      However, while the taste of such knowledge leaves Adam yearning for more, there are boundaries. It is like a toddler eating a cookie... and eventually begging her mother for the rest of the jar. Is it a coincidence that the one thing Adam and Eve are not to touch is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Most readers know how the story ends: these toddlers are never going to be content with a few cookies. They're going in for the jar.   There is a statement in the Bible that is constantly being repeated throughout the Old Testament: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of ...
Read more