Shakespeare's King Lear depicts a world where children turn against their fathers, and humans precariously walk the line between sanity and madness. Lear, a benevolent but proud king of pre-Christian Britain, abdicates his duties and divides his kingdom based on declarations of love from his three daughters. His youngest, Cordelia, displeases him by refusing to obsequiously beg like her sisters, and Lear banishes her. This, in true Aristotelian form, is the catalyst for Lear's world to collapse from order into chaos. Shakespeare's unsettling system of "civilized" society reveals the horror of the human condition; despite our attempts to create a humanitarian world, we are still brutal, and the world in which we exist is unequal and full of suffering. The greatest horrors of King Lear, however, are the revelations that humanity brings these dilemmas upon itself, and that our lives are meaningless and futile.

The parallels drawn between...