King Lear as a Commentary on Greed In chapter 4 of a book titled Escape from Freedom, the famous American psychologist Erich Fromm wrote that "Greed is a bottomless pit that it exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever achieving satisfaction” (Fromm realized that greed is one of the most powerful emotions a person can experience, but, by its very nature, it is). an emotion or driving force that can never be satisfied. Because, once someone achieves a certain goal, that person is not satisfied and continues to strive for more and more until that pursuit leads to his or her final destruction For this reason, authors have embraced the idea of ​​greed in creating hundreds of characters in thousands of novels. Almost every author has written a work centered around a character full of greed. Ian Fleming Thomas Hardy's Dickens and John D'Urberville are just a few examples of this attraction. But perhaps one of the best examples of this is found in William Shakespeare's King Lear. Edmund, through his speeches, his actions, and his relationships with other characters, becomes a character consumed by greed to the point that nothing else matters other than the endless pursuit of status and material possessions. Edmund, Gloucester's bastard son, embodies the idea of ​​avarice from the beginning of the play almost to the end. In fact, Edmund seems to get greedier and greedier as the production progresses. When Edmund is first introduced in person on stage, after a brief exposition of his character by Gloucester and Kent in the first scene, the audience immediately finds Edmund engaged in a plot to strip his father's inheritance from his own. .. half of life. paper...earns his freedom from this addiction. And only through his life and death does Shakespeare paint a picture that anyone can identify with and a picture that everyone must act upon. Works cited and consulted "Fromm, Erich". The Columbia Quotation Dictionary. CD-ROM. New York: Columbia UP, 1998. Harbage, Alfred. "King Lear: An Introduction." Shakespeare: The Tragedies: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood: Prentice-Hall, 1964: 113-22. Knight, Wilson. "King Lear and the Comedy of the Grotesque." Shakespeare: The Tragedies: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood:Prentice-Hall, 1964: 123-38.Shakespeare, William. King Lear. New York: Scholastic, 1970.Shakespeare, William. "King Lear: a confusing text." The Norton Shakespeare. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: WW Norton & Co., 1997. 2479-2553.