To conclude, Othello is a play that can be seen as a battle between love and jealousy. On the one hand, the audience sees Othello, who is losing his mind due to jealousy. On the other hand, Desdemona continues loving Othello despite everything he has done to her.
This section contains thematic guides on a variety of literary pieces. Students can find summaries, famous quotes, essay topics, prompts, samples, and all sorts of analyses (characters, themes , symbolism, etc.). Our literature guides will become an irreplaceable helper in discovering and deep studying of the most renowned written works. Every article is well-structured and easy to navigate, so everyone will find what they’re looking for in an instant. For many years, critics and the audience were unfair to Bianca as well.
Related essay Topics
However, when Othello arrives in Cyprus, he learns that the war with the Turks is over before it even started. Without these military achievements and battles, Othello feels insecure about himself and becomes an easy target for Iago. When Othello goes to the Senate to defend himself and his marriage in front of the Duke, it is not his love that helps him save the situation but Othello’s important and influential status in Venice. Desdemona loves Othello, but she makes some racially insensitive comments as well. She says, “I saw Othello’s visage in his mind.” Here she accepts that her love for him is alienated from his appearance.
Iago – Emilia
Through Emilia, we can see the inbalances in society and how women are treated in Shakespearean times. Even though Desdemona, considered by many critics and readers to be a intellectually capable and strong woman, the stereotype and the fact that she is a woman bounds her to what she can do. Othello’s passionate jealousy—the green-eyed monster, as Iago famously calls it—leads to his downfall and the murder of Desdemona. Othello is naturally a passionate individual, and Iago cynically plays upon this characteristic to set his wicked plan in motion.
Iago is the only other soldier Othello can turn to for advice and, because of the military honor code, believes he can trust Iago explicitly. As an important element of the code, Othello believes Iago even over what he knows of his own wife and it is this belief that leads to his destruction. Iago uses Othello’s doubt and suspicion, as well as Othello’s own love for others, to Othello’s destruction. Once Othello decides to love and trust Iago, he finds it impossible to doubt him. This is the case even when Iago himself tells Othello to go verify the information Iago is giving him. As it is Iago who has provided him with useful services lately and Iago who first exposed the low nature of Cassio, Othello, in his self-doubt, defers to the military honor code as a means of determining who he should listen to.
Desdemona is not afraid to use her sexuality to persuade Othello. For instance, when she decides to talk about Cassio’s case, Desdemona knows how strong her influence on Othello is. The way Cassio and Bianca communicate does not look like they are in a prostitute and client relationship. Cassio calls her “my most fair Bianca,” “my love.” They address one another so sweetly that it sounds like two people that are in an equal power partnership. This metaphor shows that Othello did not understand what a horrible thing he committed. He speaks so poetically and beautifully about killing an innocent person.
In Shakespeare’s Othello the Desdemona, the wife of Othello, ranges from a mix of emotions starting with the opening of the play having her be filled with joy and happiness until the end where confusion and sadness are her final thoughts. From this wide array of her character’s paths, each detail of the way she is thinking is clearly expressed which guides the rest of the play along with her. The emotional arch of Desdemona is greatly the emotional impact… Because of his insecurity, it was easier for him to think that she was making a fool of him rather than giving her the benefit of the doubt. Even after Iago tells her to hold her tongue, Emilia decides to tell the truth rather than let the nobles think that Desdemona was capable of infidelity. Iago kills her after she reveals his deception and he is unable to cover for himself.
The characters Iago and Othello reflect this attitude toward their respective wives, giving them reason to feel just in killing these women. Shakespeare’s Othello is subtitled “The Moor of Venice”, and as such the play has a few scenes at the beginning set in Renaissance Venice. However, most of the play is set in Cyprus, in a selection of public places, and various places in and around a castle. In Shakespeare’s time, Cyprus was an island right on the edge of European territory – a military post to keep an eye on the Turks, who were always ready to disrupt European trade and to fight them if necessary.
Furious, Iago stabs her, thus, commits his first murder in plain sight and shows his true self. In Act 1 scene 1, the audience witnesses a multitude of Iago’s personalities. He is a friend to Roderigo and a dark shadow telling Barbantio about Desdemona’s marriage. In this scene, Iago presents factual truth to both Barbantio and Othello. However, each character receives a different version of the events. This first scene is an excellent example of the contrast between appearance and reality.
There is no evidence or any material proof in the play that both of these reasons are true. By doing that, Shakespeare tries to dismantle a stereotype that the audience has about black people. Othello is one of the noblest characters that Shakespeare ever created. The attitude that Iago, Roderigo, and Barbantio have towards Othello contrasts with the ones who love and respect Othello. In Desdemona’s words, there is not only compassion, but also admiration for an extraordinary person. Othello admits that in his entire life only the last few months had fallen off of him, when he had not thought about military duty and service, and he met Desdemona.
First, just because “she shunned/The wealthy curled darlings of our nation” (a reference to rich white Venetian suitors) doesn’t mean that she is “oppose[d] to marriage”. This is a non sequitur, and Brabantio attempts to bridge the illogicality in his claim by pointing to Othello’s supposed “foul charms… drugs or minerals” as the cause. Yet Brabantio, while himself charmed by the Moor’s speech, somehow cannot fathom that his daughter would be equally attracted to the man, and insists that she must have been ‘charmed’ by sorcery instead. Brabantio is purely Shakespeare’s invention, as Cinthio’s text does not include this father figure. Interestingly, we see the shadow of Shylock in Brabantio, both being fathers of daughters who have married with men they disapprove of.
In today’s military, such administrative officers are derisively called bean counters, desk jockeys, admin weenies. Cassio’s preferment over Iago is doubly galling to an infantry grunt like Iago. Meanwhile, Othello names Iago his ensign or ancient, which in the mid-16th century was the flag bearer in battle. Navy, but in Shakespeare’s portrayal of Iago he’s akin to Othello’s top-ranking noncommissioned officer (NCO). Granted, the military I know is 400 years removed from that of Shakespeare’s time, but I’m struck by the extent to which Shakespeare establishes a military context that seems so familiar to me. And before I proceed with my observations, I want to state that while I can see Iago and Othello in today’s military, I don’t consider them representative of today’s military.
At the end of the same scene, the audience gets to hear two more reasons why Iago is so full of hatred towards Othello. From now on, the audience will see how Iago accomplishes the dismantling of Othello’s racial identity and forces Othello to see himself through Iago’s racist lens. Iago influences Othello’s own perception of himself, which later results in Othello’s insecurity. In https://loveconnectionreviews.com/ this article, our writers elaborate on all the key themes of Othello and explain why Shakespeare included them. Iago’s game was almost a success, but he could not control it to the end because of the scale of the intrigues and the large number of its participants. Blind following of feelings and emotions devoid of reason, according to the author, will inevitably turn into tragedy.
Othello’s military setting not only factors into Iago’s motivation and Othello’s gullibility, it provides the means for Iago to carry out his machinations and the environment that smoothes his way. It also offers clues to Iago’s true personality that manifests in his sadistic behavior. After some public joshing between them, Desdemona suddenly interrupts the wit war by asking, “There’s one gone to the harbor?” “Ay, madam,” Iago replies. “I am not merry, but I do beguile the thing I am by seeming otherwise,” she says and then, in the next line, goes back to the joking.