Interpretation Of Characters In King Lear In The Light Of Camus’s Philosophy Of The Absurd

King Lear is one of the four great tragedies by William Shakespeare. It is adapted from a legendary story in Britain in the eighth century. Although Shakespeare’s adaptation is largely faithful to the original version of “King Lear”, Shakespeare added some marvelous plots and a tragic ending into the original story, turning it completely into a tragic play. King Lear displays the absurd living conditions of different characters in the play as well as their different attitudes towards absurdity.Camus primarily explores the absurd living condition of human beings through his philosophy of the absurd. Camus holds that absurdity is the confrontation between man and the world, which arises from people’s call and the silence of the irrational world. He maintains that we should revolt against absurdity. Revolt means that we revolt against absurdity by living with it whilst remaining a conscious understanding of absurdity and showing a defiant attitude towards it. Some works by Camus explore how different characters arrive at their inner kingdoms in their life of exile. Kingdom refers to the free and naked life that we are supposed to retrieve, and exile is the way through which to lead us to our kingdoms.Different characters in the play King Lear confronts absurdity of different varieties, they wake up to absurdity in the world when they are faced with detachment from the world, the irrationality and alienation of human beings, the limitation of human reason, and human beings as being-towards-death. They respond to absurdities with different attitudes. In despair, Gloucester plans to jump down from the cliff edge to end his life; Lear attempts to resort to the help from gods; and Edmund resorts to violence to revolt against the unfair treatment suffered in the society. Camus does not think that these ways to respond to absurdities by these characters are right. What he suggests is the spirit of revolt by Cordelia and Edgar, who neither escape from absurdity nor resort to violence. In exile, Gloucester, Lear, and Edgar all reach their inner kingdoms, waking up to the fact that although the world is full of absurdity, they should create meaning of their own in this world with a loving, caring, and considerate heart, all of which are also required in the contemporary society.