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What realizations do Lear, Gloucester, and Edgar make from Act I to IV in King Lear?

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Lear, Gloucester, and Edgar each undergo significant realizations in Acts I to IV. Lear and Gloucester, blinded by power and deceived by their children, come to understand the harsh realities of human frailty, recognizing the deception of appearances. Lear learns humility and the cruelty of life, realizing his vulnerability. Gloucester similarly sees the world from the perspective of the less fortunate. Edgar, witnessing these transformations, learns humility and compassion earlier, guiding his father with newfound wisdom.

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Both Lear and Gloucester, who are in many way parallel characters deceived by evil children, learn to understand the difference between appearance and reality and to realize that power can blind one to the vulnerabilities and miseries all humans share. Both start the play as powerful figures. They are so used to being catered to that they don't recognize that the people around them are willing to lie to them, manipulate them, and use them for their own ends. They fail to perceive how vulnerable they are, that they too are merely frail human bodies when stripped of the trappings of society.

In Act I, scene iv, as the Fool points out, Lear acts as the real fool when he gives his kingdom over to his lying eldest daughters and rejects Cordelia, who will not flatter him. Lear values words over reality and trusts, wrongly, that he is loved for...

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himself, not his position. By Act III, scene iv, stripped of his power, facing nature unprotected, he understands that he is no different than or better than any other human, stating "Unaccommodated man is no more but ... a poor, bare, forked animal." By Act IV, scene vi, he has fully learned that life is cruel, noting that we enter it at birth crying, and feeling, in his despair, that the suffering is ceaseless. 

Likewise, Gloucester trusts his lying illegitimate son, unable to see the world through his eyes or understand his bitter resentment at being disinherited due to an accident of birth. However, by the time Edmund's treachery is clear, Gloucester, like Lear, gains some understanding of how life looks to the less fortunate, saying in Act IV, scene i:

"As flies to wanton boys, are we to th' gods, / They kill us for their sport."

He too has learned that, at their core, all humans are weak and vulnerable, no matter how powerful they might think themselves.

Edgar learns about the world by observing what has happened to his elders and by disguising himself as a mad, powerless person. He chiefly learns early on what Gloucester and Lear learn too late: greater humility. He is, for example, able to ask for his father's blessing when he meets him, as he explains in Act V, scene iii, with "his [Gloucester's] bleeding rings" (blind eyes), wandering lost. Symbolizing his wisdom, Edgar says he "became his [father's] guide." He is able to see into the heart and love the person, not the position.

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