The Core Ideas in King Lear: A Cheat Sheet

Now, while these arent the higher order arguments that you want to get to by the end of your paragraphs, they can be seen as useful gateways to help you get there. These ideas will also help you to construct thesis statements that will be arguable across three paragraphs. The relationship between deception and power; this could be either: o that self-deception is necessary in order to hold and sustain power, as once we are aware of the truth about humanity we no longer see the need for authority o that the desire for power ultimately demands the deception of others, which reminds us that power is a corrupting force That true power resides in forces beyond human control That a God-less world is ultimately corrupt, unstable, and unable to sustain itself The belief that existence is devoid of significance and is instead defined by nothingness The need for self-deception to avoid the truth of existence: that there is no fundamental or universal significance to existence The belief that true family is determined by loyalty, not blood. The interest in relationship as the source of all human conflict The idea that while selflessness is noble, it is ultimately self-destruction The idea that self-interest is ultimately immoral That justice only exits when human are good to each other, there is no divine power to create it for us That the stability of society is determined by strict adherence to gender roles The plays desire to support the power structures of Elizabethan England, where wealth and power was centralized in the King/Queen and God That loyalty is its own reward, even if unacknowledged Ultimately, only certain human emotions are useful to us e.g. pity is useless, it doesnt help anyone overcome their suffering in the play The human ability for compassion is what lifts us above the animals and is the ultimate defining quality of humanity That chaos is at the heart of our universe/existence and everything we do is merely an attempt to hide from that chaos That human reliance on other humans is both its ultimate downfall and its ultimate redemption That wisdom and power are mutually exclusive; you cannot have both at the same time