King Lear Comparative Essay

Vanessa Liang

Mr.Toffoletti

ENG4U1

October 27, 2016

                      Rough Draft    King Lear Comparative Essay

    According to Aristotle, tragedy is a dramatic imitation of human behaviour with incidents arousing catharsis among the audience through pity and fear. King Lear is a Shakespearean tragedy that incorporates the darkest facets of human nature, allowing the audience to reflect upon themselves, and ultimately acquire spiritual sublimation.  Thus, there have been numerous movie adaptations, and live productions based on this monumental text,  each providing its own unique insight. While the 1973 American theatric version starringJames Earl Jones  and the 1983 British movie adaptation both successfully engage the audience to undergo an emotional purgation triggered by Lear’s blindness and madness, Akira Kurosawa’s Ran is a stunning Japanese adaption of the text. It integrates the tragic essence by subtly depicting the suffering of an emperor for his hubris and translates the lesson learned from a Western tragedy to Eastern beliefs. As well, it emphasizes the paradox of betrayal and trust within its central theme of a chaotic universe, such as that portrayed in King Lear. Ran is the best representation of tragedy due to its incisive portrayal of the catastrophic downfall of the characters with hamartia and its insightful and universal message regardless of culture, thereby arousing pathos and catharsis among the audience.

    Compared to the 1973 play, Ran employs more diverse movie techniques to illustrate the causal relationship between Hidetora’s hamartia and hubris and his subsequent sufferings. As indicated by multiple appearances of the Buddha image in Ran, the theme of karma, a central Buddhist teaching, directly elicits pathos among the audience as it connects Hidetora’s former lifetime being a bloodthirsty savagery to his downfall (Philip 36). This helps the audience to comprehend the inevitability of Hidetora’s sufferings and to unleash their accumulative emotions. Through Lady Sué ’s dialogue and actions, the idea of karma is reinforced. As the play continues, the audience initially develops a hatred and as it progresses, the resentment is transformed into sympathy. Unlike Ran, the American play is not as focused on the connection between one’s conduct and its consequences. In the play, James Earl Jones eloquently manifests the sorrow of losing Cordelia as the greatest punishment to Lear by overdramatizing this famous lines: “Howl, howl, howl! Oh, you are men of stones” (V-iii,262). It is known that Lear’s sanction is merely due to his senility and stubbornness, resulted from his failure to assume the right responsibility as a king. Whereas in Ran, being a warrior who builds up his kingdom at the cost of thousands of innocent deaths, Hidetora deserves more serious punishment as he carries more blood debt than Lear. Indeed, Hidetora ends up paying the consequences of his machiavellianism and brutality when his kingdom is reigned by an outsider, in contrast of Albany and Edgar succeeding the throne as two sympathetic rulers in the play. Ran reveals Hidetora’s tragic defects through his past conduct and attributes these weaknesses to the current suffering of himself and the dismal fate of his kingdom, thus resulting in greater pathos among the audience.

    With a different approach to reach catharsis, Ran more powerfully illustrates the tragic nature by featuring the subtle emotions of Hidetora and the massively bloody warfare scene compared to the Elliott’ movie. This 1983 version utilizes the rainstorm as an external calamity to symbolize the internal conflicts of Lear. Under such a harsh condition, he endures the physical attack from the storm, while suffering from the spiritual agony caused by his daughters’ disobedience and experiencing intense introspection. Here Lear starts to realize his previously mistaken standing ground of a king: “loop’d and window’d raggedness can defend you [the poor]/ From seasons such as these.”(III, iv, 31-32). Whereas without the use of natural adversity, Ran depicts the internal struggle of the characters by portraying a chaotic mess of battles as a result of human’s evilness. As an illustration, finally perceiving his sons' treachery, Hidetora takes refuge in the third castle where he is attacked by Taro and Jiro’s combined forces. The fact that Hidetora is betrayed by his sons is a humiliation to him as it is a failure of being a competent father and a king. Therefore, he is expected to commit suicide concerning the Japanese honour code, the practice of Seppuku, which requires a soldier to cut his stomach in order to die as a warrior with respect. Hence, devastated by what happens, Hidetora decides to kill himself but is ironically unable to find a sword to accomplish his last command as a sane man. Indeed, the audience now are going though a strong emotion purgation through pity of Hidetora’s miserable circumstance. Moreover, the following battle scene is staged with such brutal vigour that the audience are engaged in the fear aroused by the greedy human nature that causes the cruelty. This warns the viewers of the inhumane facet of warfare and thus enables them to reflect upon themselves. Hence, the audience complete the feeling of catharsis as they realize that the brutality would not happen if the tragic hero Hidetora does not divide the kingdom in the first place. In the 1983 movie, nevertheless, the audience go through catharsis as the deaths of Lear and Cordelia confront them with every instinct calling for healing and reconciliation. Indeed, the impression of unreconciled savagery and violence at the end has been mitigated by an interpretation of Lear’s last emotion as one of joy, even ecstasy, rather than one of unbearable agony(Muir 77) : “It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows. That ever I have felt” (V-3, 269). Now the audience can sense an unbearable joy in Lear’s last gestures and look as supposed to a mere condolence and fearfulness. More effectively speaking to the audience, Ran triggers humans’ most innate pity and fear towards such merciless and chaotic, destructive warfare scene, resulting in a more condensed purgation of emotions.