The Christian will find no comfort in William Shakespeare's King Lear. Imbued with the ideals of divine justice and good prevailing over evil, the Christian will be dismayed when he plunges into tragedy to find pure-hearted gentlemen reduced to rags and feigning madness and deceitful characters easily sneaking in to gain access to power without consequence. This is the ungodly universe that Shakespeare creates, setting his characters' plots in a world devoid of the heavenly checks and balances that reward moral people and punish wrongdoers. A sort of dark chaos ensues, where wrongs are ultimately not righted, and the random results of these characters' actions tend toward calamity. While the few righteous characters in the play suffer greatly, ending in total misfortune, and the protagonist dies, having repented of his mistakes, with an anguish that can never be redeemed, it is clear that Shakespeare's tragedy takes place in a universe where divine justice has no jurisdiction. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay Among the small number of honest characters in King Lear, virtually none of them are rewarded for their pure hearts. In fact, quite the opposite happens when the honorable are struck by misfortune and completely mistreated by those with whom they come into contact. The character of Edgar is a good example of this phenomenon in the play. When Edgar, the loving and loyal son of the moderately powerful and respected Lord Gloucester, is trapped by his illegitimate brother, Edgar must flee to save himself. Because he wrongly believes that Edgar was plotting to murder him, Gloucester orders that Edgar be executed if he is found, forcing the hapless Edgar to take on the appearance of a mad beggar in order to survive and keep his identity. The reader has his first contact with Edgar in his new character when Lear meets Edgar in a hovel posing as poor Tom, a man dressed in rags, convinced that the Devil is encouraging him to commit suicide. Once alone, Edgar contemplates the terrible state he must endure to survive: As long as I can escape, I will preserve myself, and I think it will take the lowest and poorest form that every shortage, in contempt of man, brings closer to the beast. My face will be stained with filth, I will cover my loins… (II.iii.5-10)Edgar must now live as one of the most hated and despicable members of society in order to escape persecution for something which he did not do. Although he has always been loyal to his father, Edgar is now reduced to living in rags, covered in dirt and exposed to the elements. An innocent man is driven to live like a beast while his treacherous brother reaps the rewards of his dastardly plan, a situation that divine justice, if present, would not permit. At the end of the play, Edgar returns as a gentleman and assumes the position of King of England. This is sadly a sad reward for the hardships he endured and the despair he witnessed. For Edgar, becoming king cannot undo Gloucester's death, take back his brother's betrayal, or redeem the horrors committed against Lear and Cordelier. Edgar, one of the play's few truly good characters, becomes a broken man after witnessing and tolerating the pain that permeates his world. One of the few other completely pure characters in King Lear receives a similarly dismal fate, but his is arguably worse. Cordelia is King Lear's youngest and favorite daughter. When the king decides to share his lands between his three daughters, Cordelia receives nothing and is disinherited by her father.because she does not want to taint the true love she has for the man by flattering him in a grandiose way. This act of authenticity, which contrasts with the false and pompous flattery of her perfidious older sisters, puts Cordelia's misfortune into action. The woman is disowned by Lear and goes to live with her new husband, the king of France. When Cordelia hears about her sisters' mistreatment of their father and Lear's terrible condition, Cordelia steps in to try to save her beloved father. After being so wronged by the man, Cordelia says this about Lear: O, dear father, it is your business that I attend to.…No exaggerated ambition prompts our arms, but love, dear love, and the right of our old father. can I hear it and see it. (IV.iv.26-32) Although the man has unjustly disowned him, Cordelia has the honor to intervene and risk her life to right the wrongs done to her father and attempt to restore the power of the man. No bitterness is detected in the speech of this character of great purity towards his father. Cordelia expresses her resilient love for Lear and the work she does on his behalf. Ultimately, death is the price Cordelia pays for her loyalty and when the French army fails to defeat the English, Cordelia and her father are taken prisoner by Edmund. Although it would not be a tragedy without this element, it is the hardest blow of the play that Cordelia's death. The most blameless character in the play, the one who returns to the father who mistreated her to save him from his two other deceptive daughters, dies by hanging before the conclusion of this madness. Cordelia's unfailing righteousness is not rewarded by this chaotic universe. Rather, his good heart is punished for acting with love and honor and the woman is needlessly killed. What makes his death even more messy, meaningless and tragic is the fact that a guard was about to call off his execution. Cordelia is a kind-hearted character who becomes a victim of the godless universe in which she resides, where the gods are impervious to justice and betrayal. Although the play is full of good men who end in misfortune and bad ones prosper, no better evidence can be found. to be brought into the world due to lack of divine justice in this world as the protagonist of the tragedy. From the first scene of the play, King Lear does things that put him at odds with the reader. His disinheritance of pure Cordelia and banishment of his righteous advisor Kent are inappropriate actions that portray Lear as a hotheaded and unloving ruler and father. Through the intense anguish he experiences throughout the play, the audience sympathizes with the man who is on the verge of madness due to grief. While he is betrayed by his two eldest daughters, exposed to the elements, and eventually has hallucinations that mourn his lost kingship, Lear regains the public's pity. In Act IV, scene vii, it is clear that Lear is sorry for his actions and the wrongs he committed against Cordelia. Lear atones for his mistakes, acknowledges his mistakes and asks his youngest daughter for forgiveness: “Pray now, forget and forgive. I am old and foolish” (98-99). In a vaguely Christian sense, Lear repents of his sins and is forgiven for the wrongs he has committed. If King Lear were a Christian work, in which heaven recognized a changed man and rewarded him, Lear's fortunes would have improved and his life would have ended happily at the end of the play. On the contrary, this tragedy ends, like almost all, with emotionally painful deaths. Once Lear repents, the deepest blow man can imagine is the death of his most beloved child, Cordelia, leaving him virtually broken mentally and emotionally. With the..