Parasitic Families

Hopefully your parents don't consider you to be a parasite. But this what the Fool seems to be insinuating about Goneril, and frankly he's right. (This is one of the first glimpses at what we will see in King Lear about parent-child relationships.)

The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,

That it had it head bit off by it young. (Act 1 scene 4)

Now, I don't know how much you know about a cuckoo, that is the bird, and so I would like to enlighten you because I think this analogy really illuminates what Fool is trying to illustrate to Lear. It also really demonstrates the first glance at family relationships in this play.

The common cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests of other birds. The birds don't recognize the egg as one that is not their own. The cuckoo eggs develops a lot faster than other birds and so generally it hatches before the other bird. The newly hatched cuckoo chick then proceeds to push the other eggs out of the nest and eliminates the other competition. As it grows the other adult birds feed the cuckoo chick for 16 hours everyday. See one cuckoo chick is usually about the equivalent of feeding

10 of the regular bird's chick. This is an enormous task!! This is so much work for the birds that end up being smaller than their chick that they are unable to produce another nest full of their own chicks! The cuckoo literally takes all and gives back nothing. (And just for your enjoyment here is a video so you can see that this is real life! Sorry its a link but it decided not to embed....)

Once you know and see this, you can see why choosing to compare Goneril to a cuckoo is such a vivid description, and why it should have snapped Lear back to the reality of his relationship right away.

See, Goneril is only using Lear and is unwilling to give back anything in return. Her whole life she has been fed, protected, and cared for by Lear and the wealth that he has to supply. And much like the cuckoo chick, which has no love or concern for its providers, she has no concern for her father. She just demands, takes, demands more and then schemes to take more! She doesn't even truly love him and wants him totally out of her castle! She is treacherous, and I am sure would have taken out her other siblings, like the cuckoo does the other eggs, if a chance had been given to her before!

Like the other birds, I cannot believe Lear has not seen this before. He is so blinded by pride that he doesn't want to see what is really missing from his life and the many flaws that he has. He doesn't want to truly understand that his daughter is manipulative, cunning, smooth tongued and is planning his downfall. He is being worked over by his daughter and yet he keeps allowing it to happen, until he finally comes to see the truth. But even then he is still blinded as he decides to go see his daughter Regan, who is also like the cuckoo but he has yet to believe that. The only child who is true to him is Cordelia, and he pushed her out of his nest by himself.