Tragedy features & Suffering

• ‘All’s cheerless, dark and deadly’ 

  Act 5 Scene 3

  This list of three negative adjectives reinforces the hopeless atmosphere of the denouement while conveying Kent’s personal despair and grief. 
• Lear: ‘O, I have ta’en/Too little care of this!’ - 3.4


  The interjection of ‘O’ heightens the emotion of this moment as well as the exclamative emphasizing Lear’s distress.
• “Is this the promised end?” Act 5 scene 3 


  Cordelia’s question has a heartbreaking tone of defeat and sorrow with their loss against the prevailing evil. The “end” becomes worse, with Lear carrying Cordelia’s dead body onstage later on. ‘The promised’ evokes imagery of fate and the divine
• “For I am ready to dissolve” Act 5 Scene 3 


  His tears are finally being acknowledged. He has a greater feeling for those who should remain in power and those who shouldn’t. He has absorbed his femininity and realised that the old order is over now
• “Thou’dst shun a bear; but if thy flight lay toward the roaring sea thou’dst meet the bear i'the mouth.” Act 3 Sc 4 
• 'My poor fool is hanged' - Lear


  Fool and Cordelia as manifestations of Lear's conscience. Lexical choice emphasises Cordelia's unjust death, conveys her innocence
• 'A poor old man as full of grief as age, wretched in both’ 2.4
• ‘Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, / And thou no breath at all? Thoull’t come no more; / Never, never, never, never, never.’ 5.3


  Lear’s despairing interrogative at the injustice before him is emphasised by the list of natural imagery, questioning and refuting any divine justice or fairness. That he repeats ‘never’ in a relentless trochaic thud heightens his suffering at the finality of death, reflecting the motif of ‘nothing’ throughout.
• ‘As flies are to wanton boys are we to the gods: they kill us for their sport’ Gloucester  


  Simile suggests the bleak, cynical outlook that Gloucester takes characterising the gods as cruel and hostile Bitter tone of voice as he has experienced the cruel violence of evil