Sight Verus Blindness. Be Sure Term Paper

Total Length: 1828 words ( 6 double-spaced pages)

Total Sources: 1

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Look with thine ears: see how yond / justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in / thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which / is the justice, which is the thief? Thou hast seen / a farmer's dog bark at a beggar?"(IV. vi. 166-171) Lear's words are very interesting: he urges Gloucester thus to listen inwardly to his deeper sense of perception and not trust merely his eyes. By a sort of re-imagining process he would thus be able to "change the places" of the thief and the justice in his mind and realize who is the real villain. Thus, Lear finally realizes that insight comes from closing one's eyes on mere appearance and looking beyond the gilded surface. The metaphor of the glass eyes that he tells Gloucester he should find for himself is also significant: he must judges by having insight and not by merely seeing: "Get thee glass eyes; / and like a scurvy politician, seem / to see the things thou dost not."(IV.
vi. 186-188) Thus, the true insight belongs to those who can see beyond the surface. The Fool in this play is a truly witty one, and one of the most insightful characters in the work. It is he thus who through his freedom to speak anything he likes, is able to draw the attention of the others towards truth: "Winter's not gone yet, if the wild-geese fly that way. / Fathers that wear rags / Do make their children blind; / but fathers that bear bags / Shall see their children kind. / Fortune, that arrant whore, / Ne'er turns the key to the poor. / but, for all this, thou shalt have as many dolours / for thy daughters as thou canst tell in a year. (II. iv. 52-60)

In Shakespeare's play thus, the characters are symbolically divided in two sets: the one who have moral insight and the ones who are easily blinded by the.....

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"Sight Verus Blindness Be Sure" (2007, December 07) Retrieved June 4, 2026, from
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Latest Chicago Format (16th edition)

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"Sight Verus Blindness Be Sure", 07 December 2007, Accessed.4 June. 2026,
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/sight-verus-blindness-sure-33534