Modern Age - Winter 2018 - 135

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puts his own passions first. That same desire for honor leads him
to disinherit his youngest daughter, Cordelia, for telling him the
truth. Lear's vices stem primarily from pride-induced blindness.
After his eldest daughters unceremoniously undermine and banish him, he undergoes a cathartic journey from darkness to light,
callousness to compassion, and pride to humility.
The original Lear invokes a variety of Platonic themes. Like The
Republic, Lear focuses on questions of justice: whether there is an
objective justice, or whether we are instead subject to the whims
of fate and the will of the stronger. Goneril and Regan are ruled
by lustful, unrestrained appetites, as well as by disdain for their
father and leader. In this respect, they embody the vices of Plato's
tyrant. In tyrannical regimes, notes Plato, "a father habituates
himself to be like his child and fear his sons, and a son habituates
himself to be like his father and to have no shame before or fear
of his parents." Goneril and Regan's journey-from attempted
parricide to their own self-destruction-follows their assertion of
a conception of justice as the will of the stronger but also reveals
that view's collapse under the weight of their disordered passions.
Lear's betrayal and death, however, don't carry quite the same
weight in a modern setting. For one thing, transformation into
Harry Dunbar changes the nature of Lear's vices. Dunbar the
capitalist does not bear the same dignity as Lear the king. He-
much like his two eldest daughters, here renamed Abigail and
Megan-is ruled by his appetites, desirous of money and power.
St. Aubyn writes that Dunbar's two eldest daughters "had spared
no effort to please him by imitating his ruthlessness and will to
power." Dunbar is himself a tyrant, a man no less cunning or
manipulative than his daughters, a man who has actively ruined
lives and tarnished reputations. In Shakespeare's original, Lear
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Modern Age - Winter 2018

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