Coping with Mortality: The Fear of Death as Discussed by Shakespeare's King Lear and Romances, and Psychology's Terror Management Theory

My critical thesis examines how humans cope with an awareness of their own mortality and the inevitability of death by looking at Shakespeare’s King Lear and his four late romance plays. All five plays depict the fracturing... [ view full abstract ]

My critical thesis examines how humans cope with an awareness of their own mortality and the inevitability of death by looking at Shakespeare’s King Lear and his four late romance plays. All five plays depict the fracturing and reconciliation of the father-daughter relationship as they explore themes of divine justice, human suffering and mortality. I argue that Shakespeare uses the father-daughter relationship, as well as man’s relationship to sexuality and the female body, to represent how humans engage with their mortality. Shakespeare also questions the justice of the gods, uses storms and the sea to figure the uncontrollability of life, and probes the possibility of different forms of immortality. To this literary analysis, I add the findings of a psychology theory known as Terror Management Theory (TMT). TMT proposes that because humans are aware of their own mortality, they must defend against their fear of death by constructing worldviews, values, and self-esteem to give their existence meaning and so become more than their physical bodies. Both Shakespeare and TMT recognize this need to be more than our physical bodies because the death of the body is unavoidable. Shakespeare also implies that our terror is motivated by the unknown of what comes after death and our own feelings of impotence, as we are battered by life’s storms and subject to divine justice. Shakespeare, however, prescribes that part of coping with death and enjoying our mortality is an essential letting go of our longing for control, as we accept our own impotence.