In William Shakespeare's play “King Lear,” Gloucester and Edmund are two very important characters who have unquestionably different point of views on humans' abilities to determine their own characters, actions, and fates. Gloucester, who committed adultery and had a bastard son, believes that humans don’t decide their own fate. However on the other hand there is Edmund who is a cunning evil man who only wants power and money and revenge for being a bastard. He believes the sun and moon and all things don’t control our fate and anyone who truly thinks things like the moon and sun decide human fate are idiots. In the two passages where Edmund and Gloucester talk about human fate, it is decided they take very different points of view which are amplified by distinctive diction of negativity toward the opposing sides. Their tones also signify their feelings toward the other side's belief because it is very pessimistic and angry, however their tones are very different as Gloucester is very manipulative and Edmund is more making a mockery out of the subject. Through both of these speeches we see both men take very different views, Edmund saying humans do control their fate and Gloucester saying humans don’t control fate. Now if you look at who each character is it makes sense as to why they choose the side they did, because a man who committed adultery and had a bastard son doesn’t want to take the blame for that - he wants to have something to blame so he says I can’t help it the moon, stars and sun decide fate not me. However Edmund, who wants revenge for being born a bastard son and not being loved like a real son, doesn’t want his father to make excuses - he wants him to own up to his choices and in turn of course believes people decide their own fate. Therefore awe see these two very different men show their very different points of view about human fate which is guided by their own selfish motives like wanting revenge or not wanting to take blame for adultery through the use of tone and diction. Ulterior motives are something we see a lot in this play and these two speeches don’t fall short as an example. Through each of their very different tones we can see their ulterior motives start to be revealed. In Gloucester's speech his tone is very manipulative like in a way he is trying to make us believe something he does not even believe himself. He starts his speech off with, “Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourges by the negative effects.” In this he is saying though science can explain away the eclipses, disasters still come after them. Now this line is very straight forward he is saying how because bad things happen after the eclipse it has to be the eclipse's fault. This is the start of where see the manipulative tone start, because obviously there could be thousands of reasons that t