William Shakespeare's King Lear is a dramatic play that displays many relationships between different characters. King Lear, himself, and Gloucester can be seen as two parallel characters with the same mentality, while at the same time be looked upon with differences. These two characters seem to be walking down the same path unknowingly, but in the end, Gloucester becomes truly blind to the world, and King Lear begins to take in reality as it is.
             The relationships between King Lear and Gloucester will be the central topic of this paper. Beginning with similarities, King Lear and Gloucester possess an unruly impulse in making very rash and important decisions involving their children. Lear banishes his favorite daughter on account of her response to his question of love, and Gloucester gives his estate to his bastard son, Edmund, because of a forged letter from his favorite son "Edgar". Another similarity between the two characters is their blindness of deceit from their children. Lear lets his ungrateful daughters take over his kingdom and treat him like a piece of dirt because he thinks they love him. Gloucester is also deceived by his fraudulent, bastard son into thinking that Edgar wants him dead, when in fact, in both cases, it is the exact opposite. The two men, in addition, seem to both be old and senile. King Lear has a few fits that make people question his sanity, while Gloucester blames the kingdom's troubles on superstitious things like eclipses. Both men are obviously not mentally stable.
             King Lear and Gloucester, on the contrary, can, too, be seen as opposites. When Gloucester has his eyes picked out, King Lear begins to face reality. The overall story is how Lear acquired better vision, as from when Kent told him, "see, better, Lear". For both Lear and Gloucester, affliction brings insight, more valuable than sight.
             Gloucester's character undergoes more of a physica...