Justice in King Lear

"The gods are just" Edgar (IV.i.37–38)

In class, we talked a lot about the world of King Lear and the apparent indifference nature has to mankind. Professor pointed out that good things don't necessarily happen to the good people in this play. And if that's so, if there is no logic to the bad, then what is the meaning of tragedy? If we can't categorize the succession of terrible events in the play as being fair or unfair then King Learcan't really be a tragedy at all. The play loses the limits that justice would put on it and, because of this, the play loses its meaning. Just as King Lear gradually accepts the indifferent, superior power of nature, so must the audience accept that their lives are as meaningless and lacking in justice as the characters on the stage. “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; / They kill us for their sport,” Gloucester says, implying how foolish mankind, as well as the audience, is to assume that the natural world works with the goal of justice in mind. Edgar though, offers a different opinion that the "gods are just." So which is it? In a way, it does almost seem like poetic justice that King Lear loses the only daughter who truly loved him right after he realizes how poorly he mistreated her. But it's justice at the expense of an injustice to the kind-hearted Cordelia. Can justice be both existent and non-existent at the same time? In the end of the play, it seems like we're just left with a disturbing uncertainty rather than a definite answer. There is good that triumphs at the end of the play but there is also death and madness. In a sense, Shakespeare's King Lear doesn't bother to answer anything for the audience but rather live in a state of constant questioning right along with us.

Courtney Powell
Hoch/1B