1. Themes of the Play-Animals
King Lear
Themes of the Play-Animals

2. “Tigers not daughters”
Much of the animal imagery, particularly that referring to savage creatures, is associated with:
Goneril
Regan
The daughters possess an instinctive, animalistic evil.

3. ‘monsters of the deep’
The sisters are also likened to fiends and monsters.
Goneril is ‘sharp-toothed, like a vulture’ with a ‘wolfish visage’. Lear refers to her as a ‘detested kite’.
Lear refers to Regan as looking ‘most serpent like’.

4. The sisters posses ‘boarish fangs’
The implications of these references is clear: Goneril and Regan are cruel predators, ‘pelican daughters’ who want to see their father bleed.
Their inhumanity is reconfirmed when Gloucester and Cordelia describe how a wild beast would have been allowed shelter in the storm, but not Lear (Act III Scene 7).
Appropriately, Goneril and Regan are destroyed by their animal instincts.