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Bring out the significance of the Storm Scene in King Lear.

Bring out the significance of the Storm Scene in King Lear.
In King Lear we find a terrible storm, forming the very dramatic center of the tragedy. It spreads over three scenes Act Ill, Scenes 1, 2 and 4 separated by a brief scene—scene Ill—regarding Edmund's affairs. It is not an ordinary storm. The elements are fretful, the winds seem to blow the earth into the sea. Its violence and terrifying aspects remind one of the doomsday's disaster. King Lear resembles a stormy night.
It is on such a terrible night that the old and hopeless King Lear is turned out of doors. The cruel daughters, as told by Gloucester, have exposed their father "whose kind heart gave all" to contend with the fretful element. The fact, heightens, on the one hand, the inhumanity of the daughters, and on the other hand, accentuates our pity for the old king who, we begin to feel is really "more sinned against than sinning
The storm carries forward the plot rapidly towards a climax. It is on the stormy night on the heath that a number of important characters come together. There is first of all, the trinity or trio of madness i.e. Lear, Edgar, and the Fool. Kent is also there, and there also comes Gloucester, first in search of the old King Lear and later himself as a blind, helpless old man. The pelting of the severe storm completes the process of Lear's insanity. It provides both the external shock as well as the stimulus of imitation, necessary according to medical authorities, to drive a mentally touched person to complete mental derangement. Henceforth Lear is totally mad. Lear is obsessed with the idea of filial ingratitude, thinks that Edgar, too, has been driven mad by the ill-treatment of his daughters, and proceeds to hold the mock-trial of ungrateful children with the Fool and Edgar, acting as "Justicers".
Just as the tempest on the heath completes the process of Lear's insanity, so it completes the process of his regeneration. It is now that he thinks of others. First, he agrees to seek shelter for the sake of his poor boy, and then learns to feel and pray for the "poor naked wretches." It is now that he discerns for the first time the falseness of flattery and the brutality of authority.
The storm on the heath has a far-reaching symbolic value as well. The violent disturbance in nature symbolizes the violent disturbances in the moral world where Evil is rife, and where the Good no doubt, will assert itself but only after terrible devastation. It also symbolizes the wrath of the gods at the ungrateful children and is a warning to them of the approaching doom. But above all, storm in nature is an externalization of the tempest that rages within the breast of the helpless, old King.

The storm scenes strike the very keynote of the play. The storm brings forth Lear's tragedy in a different dimension. It is the investing of King with motley: it is also the crowning and apotheosis of the Fool. The old Lear dies in the storm and the new Lear is born in the scene in which he is reunited with Cordelia. His madness marks the end of the wilful, egotistical monarch. He is resurrected as a fully sane human being.

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