King Lear completes a transformation in the play King Lear that is powerful and noteworthy. As the play progresses, he embraces his emotions and becomes willing and able to shed tears. In the beginning, he tells his daughters that they must confess their love for him in order to receive their portion of the kingdom upon his retirement. This indicates that love, being an emotion, is something of great importance to him, even utmost importance. Coppelia Kahn, on the other hand, would have us believe that Lear is a power wielding, oppressive father that lacks emotion as a result of his patriarchal world. Is this a fair assessment? Or is it an attempt to further a feminist agenda that places all men in a class of unfeeling, uncaring, cold-hearted bastards?
King Lear was responsible to provide for their basic needs, educate his daughters, and see that they married well. He may very well have been affectionate towards them. However, each child is born with her own personality. It’s possible the three daughters were spoiled. The fact that they all grew up in the same environment cannot account for the greed the older two power-hungry sisters exhibited, compared to the apparent humility, honesty and love that the youngest daughter was endowed with. Is the king responsible for their behavior? No, these women are adults and must take responsibility for what they say, think, and do.
For Kahn to infer that the absence of the mother “points to her hidden existence” is farfetched. The late Queen is not mentioned in the play. It is possible that the king played a larger than normal role in nurturing his daughters. The fact that Goneril and Regan have less than desirable character traits, and play the antagonist roles, doesn’t constitute a flattering tribute to a mother figure that didn’t exist in their life.
Kahn is quoted as saying, “He learns to weep and, though his tears scald and burn like molten lead, they are no longer ‘women’s weapons’ against which he must defend himself.” This quote can be taken several different ways. I believe Kahn would have us believe that Lear opposed the shedding of his own tears, and felt that he must have a defensive strategy to keep them at bay. However, consider that women will use crying as a way of appearing hurt, defenseless, vulnerable, weak, etc. in order to manipulate the men in their company to take a certain action, make a certain decision, and such as that. Could Lear have meant that women used their tears as a tool or weapon to try to overcome the opposite sex, and, subsequently, put the male counterpart on defense? The audience must draw its own conclusion to these questions.
Lear is an old man who becomes emotional in his last days. I would dare say that as king, he did not allow himself to cry in front of others. So, naturally, he prefers a noble anger instead of shedding tears from the hurt inflicted by his daughter, when he speaks so eloquently:
“I have full cause of weeping; but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I’ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!”
Later, when he is at last reunited with Cordelia, he is overwhelmed with emotion, and says:
“ …but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.”
He is finally crying, and without shame or difficulty. As Lear undergoes an emotional transformation, he truly begins to know himself better than in any other time of his life. I believe he comes to complete acceptance of his true humanity.

Aunt Emily declares "Checkmate!"
Search: To uncover, find, or come to know by inquiry or scrutiny: SEEK. Thus, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines the term that Jack “Binx” Bolling uses in his own linguistic repertoire of words that hold special meaning to him in Walker Percy’s novel
The Moviegoer. Yes, Binx has a special vocabulary for certain aspects of his life, and his

original conception of the search came to him while in the Orient. In a state of intense curiosity, his mental faculties became acutely aware that he “was onto something” (11) and the search was conceived in Mr. Bolling.
The opening chapter informs us that on this very day, as Binx dresses to go out for lunch, he sees his personal items on his dresser in a rather peculiar, impersonal way which causes his awareness of the ordinariness of his life to confront him. Immediately the search is invoked to rescue him. Binx explains about the search as follows: “To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair” (13). Throughout the novel he thinks about the search and he speaks of the search in his dialogues with Kate. The epilogue to The Moviegoer brings forth the matter of the search whereby Binx indicates he is not inclined to say much about it. However, he makes several remarks which indicate that, according to Kierkegaard, he doesn’t have the authority to speak of the search except to edify it; that since it is past Kierkegaard’s time he shouldn’t even be edifying the search; and as a member of his mother’s family, he needn’t even speak of religion. What does Binx mean by all this? I believe it is his eloquent discourse of a subject matter that is very important to him. He finally accepts that he is seeking a spiritual life that is alive in contrast to his physical life that is dead, just like everyone else’s life that he encounters is dead.
Binx undergoes a transformation when he returns home from Chicago. His meeting with Aunt Emily where she grills him about his sexual relations with Kate on the trip does not end well for him. In her lecture his aunt reveals that her assumptions about Binx have been incorrect in believing him to be of the same noble class as she. She allows that when someone faces adversity their reactions show their true character. She clearly indicates that Binx is not of a traditional type person, he is not of her class of people, and her objectivity and lack of former warmness towards him indicates he is no longer part of the inner ring of the family.
What is Binx’s response to his aunt’s treatment? He tells us, “My search has been abandoned; it is no match for my aunt, her rightness and her despair, her despairing of me and her despairing of herself” (228). Aunt Emily’s despair places Binx’s search in checkmate. Binx is no longer a knight in shining armor on Aunt Emily’s chess board. He is reduced to a pawn’s status, and is no longer expected to be the chivalrous warrior fighting for the cause of good and honor. With this change in status he has more freedom to be who he wants to be, and he no longer feels the despair of “the noble life” and all the expectations that come with it. Therefore, he has no more need of the search.