King Lear is a brutal play filled with cruelty and seemingly meaningless disasters. All of these terrible events trigger the reader to question whether this world is full of meaningless chaos, or that justice strikes those that truly evoke it. One character Edgar brings up that, "the Gods are just" believing that individuals get what they deserve. However in the end of the play you realize the uncertain reality that although the wicked die, the noble die along with them, concluding with Lear holding the body of his dead daughter Cordelia. The word "justice" appears in many of the United States' most important documents, including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Pledge of Allegiance. But for a word that's used so often, its true definition is still a topic of debate for philosophers. It is an ideal and a standard that people live by. We want to believe people get what they deserve and that when a person commits a crime they don't walk free and get away with it, but that they are punished. But what if judicial system is the Gods that the characters of this play believe in. As you are reading you see that when a character is ostracized the antagonist who provoked the act is inevitably punished. .
Throughout this play several characters are deviously scheming behind another's back with the intentions of overthrowing them. When Lear shares with his daughters that he is going to spilt his kingdom into three territories for them to reign over and all he simply asks is who loves him the most, two of the sisters, Regan, who is the middle and most aggressive daughter and Goneril, who is the oldest most ruthless daughter, immediately declare their boundless and unrelenting love for him with the underlying motive of banishing their father while the last daughter, Cordelia, tells him, "I cannot heave my heart into my mouth, I love you as much as a daughter should lover her father".
