Shakespeare’s King Lear and Dickens’s Oliver Twist : a study in accidental counterpoint

Abstract

This thesis aims to prove how, when Shakespeare’s King Lear and Dickens’s Oliver Twist are studied together, they accidentally counterpoint each other when representing the same human issues. The play and the novel work in an amazingly opposite manner. This shows that the questions they deal with, which are the basic questions of the human race (like family, religion, exploration of the mind, etc.), have no solution and no one is able to find a true answer to such questions. Through these two works’ opposing outcomes, this thesis aims to show that when dealing with questions of the human race, there is no one or definite answer—there are only points of view. By combining King Lear and Oliver Twist in this thesis, I have produced a post-modernist work. The Post-modernist theory examines the world from many perspectives and viewpoints of individuals. Edward Said, in Orientalism, states that, in this life, there are only points of view and no one definite answer. The first chapter of this thesis discusses how King Lear and Oliver Twist counterpoint each other in religion. In the play, there is no reflection or presence of any heavenly religion, especially not the Christian one. It is a pagan play, abounding in atheism. However, the novel clearly and greatly reflects Christianity and Christ’s teachings through its plot and characters which are based on Biblical parables. The second Chapter discusses how the presence of the family in King Lear is destructive while the absence of the family in Oliver Twist is destructive. It is not only the hatred that Goneril and Regan have that is destructive, but that family love is destructive as well—it destroys Lear and Cordelia. However, the opposite is true for Oliver where family is something desirable for him, and it is only when he is surrounded by the love of a family that he is happy and saved. Chapter three shows how in King Lear, the guilty characters like Goneril, Regan and Edmund develop no guilty conscience over their evil acts, w