StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...

Othello and Iago - Book Report/Review Example

Cite this document
Summary
How peculiar we humans are - while striving for happiness and positive feelings we extract arguably the strongest emotions from the genre of tragedy. But I believe this is not a contradiction because the main concern of man is another human being and few of us could witness suffering of our fellows without deep condolence…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER95% of users find it useful
Othello and Iago
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Othello and Iago"

Download file to see previous pages

What makes Shakespeares heroes so unforgettable I guess it is their accented humanities - Shakespeare shows the intricacy of human soul and so complex emotional experiences that a reader is glued to his works. In this regard, Shakespearian "Othello" is one of the most vivid examples of a powerful talent of the author in creation of characters whose personalities concentrate in them the essence of different human virtues and vices, as if serving as magnifying lenses through which we can better recognize different human qualities.

Othello and Iago, the main heroes of the play, represent respectively the human vices of blind jealousy and human wickedness the roots of which is hard to fully explain. But of course Othello and Iago are much more complex personages who entwine the mentioned qualities into a rich and complex canvas of the human soul. Let us overview the characters of Othello and Iago and try to compare and contrast them. The protagonist of the play Moor Othello is the army general, and thus is eloquent and respected.

But his open nature and his situation in terms of his ethnicity, age, and military lifestyle would allow for a terrible manipulation from the side of Iago, who manages to transform the love of Othello for his wife Desdemona into a deadly jealousy. For the most part of the play Othello is absent from the action that revolves around him, and such a position of Othello as a kind of outsider in the play, even despite his honored position, is one of the causes why he is so easily manipulated by Iago.

Indeed, Othello realizes that he is somewhat exotic due to his ethnicity, and, strangely, despite his definite eloquence he even demotes himself, for example saying: "Rude am I in my speech" (1, 3, 91). However, it seems that this statement will become true as in the process of being influenced by Iago he is losing his eloquence to a certain degree. It will be in the closing moments of the play that equanimity will return to Othello again, and his words before his death will impress his audience.

In this way, Othello in the last moments of his life becomes liberated from the factors that spoiled his life - Othello's internal controversy as of a man who confronts a foreign culture, and his propensity for self-torturing. These qualities of Othello which at some point we begin to clearly see make him a tragic figure of his own, and not just a prey of Iago. Iago is the chief evildoer of the play, and probably the most depraved personage of Shakespeare. What makes him so terrible is the fact that it is hard to justify his actions.

While in the beginning of the play Iago voices his irritation at Othello because he was not given the lieutenant position, and later he suspects that Othello had had an affair with his wife Emilia, it is not convincing that such motives are sufficient to justify the diabolical plan of Iago, and it may even seem that the mentioned circumstances are only an excuse for his actions. Thus, the fundamental voluntariness of deeds of Iago and his incapacity or lack of desire to reveal his real motivation adds horror to his behavior.

In this situation, it seems that Iago is striving to take revenge on any person on the slightest reason, so that the list of his targets is too large to consider him normal. After all, he apparently enjoys the process of causing human suffering. And in this job he excels - for instance consider his episodes with the silly Roderigo when Iago's manipulative

...Download file to see next pages Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“Othello and Iago Book Report/Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words”, n.d.)
Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/literature/1518964-othello-and-iago
(Othello and Iago Book Report/Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 Words)
https://studentshare.org/literature/1518964-othello-and-iago.
“Othello and Iago Book Report/Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 Words”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/literature/1518964-othello-and-iago.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Othello and Iago

The Character of Othello

The contrast between Othello and Iago may well be intended to highlight the difference between military power (such as Othello weilds) and political power (which Iago uses to deadly effect).... These descriptions are all intended to discredit othello and represent him as a foreigner, a non-Christian, and a predator on the innocent Desdemona.... The key question which might help to resolve the paradoxes in Othello's character is whether his demise is due to his own personal failings, or whether he is the victim of iago's evil plotting....
3 Pages (750 words) Essay

Good Looks and Charm Causes Harm

She acts in good faith but her pleading receives a different translation from Othello and Iago.... Othello makes Cassio the lieutenant despite claims from iago that he lacks expertise in war.... iago lets vengeance to define his actions and he does not relent in fixing Cassio.... iago manipulates events and makes Othello believe that Cassio is having an affair with Desdemona, a plot that brings Cassio down (Keller 400).... The fact that Casio possesses these traits makes it easy for the characters to fall into iago's deception....
4 Pages (1000 words) Research Paper

Masculine and Feminine Nuances in the Play Othello by William Shakespeare

There she greets Cassio, a lieutenant to Othello, and iago sees this as an opportunity to plant the seeds of suspicion in the former's mind about his wife.... iago has taken money earlier from Roderigo on the tacit understanding that he will help him in the marrying Desdemona.... iago also harbors a grudge against Cassio because the latter has been promoted by Othello, sidelining him.... Thus, iago finally manages to convince Othello that his wife has an affair with his lieutenant and in a fit of rage, he kills her....
5 Pages (1250 words) Essay

Annotated bibliography: William Shakespeare''s Othello

Her critical commentary on the responsibility for Desdemona's and Emilia's death is noticeably differs from that of other critics who ascribe it either to Othello and Iago or to Desdemona and Emilia themselves.... (2001): 43, emphasize contrast of the romance between othello and Desdemona and that between Iago and Emilia - one so passionate; the other so calculating.... This article is also of great interest because Emilia's death is getting here a new angle on as it has not in works of many critics, until very recently, received comparable attention, and it is agreed that iago is solely responsible for her death....
2 Pages (500 words) Essay

Othello Is One of Shakespeares Masterpieces

The relationship between Othello and Iago is the key to this play.... The intimacy of this cruelty makes this relationship, and iago's malevolence, very interesting.... This is an important distinction in the play, the difference between Othello's final soliloquy which is so moving and in which we see how great a man he is, and iago's final lines, as he is being led off to be tortured: “What you know, you know.... And there is iago, a person who Coleridge once described as embodying “a motiveless malevolence....
1 Pages (250 words) Essay

Famous Iagos: Why in their Words, Some Actors See Iago as a More Interesting Role than Othello

According to Augustus, in no play are… (181) It, hence, not surprising why the most famous actors have no issues in regard to being chosen or in choosing to act either of these two as if both are equally Playing both the roles of Othello and Iago by well-known actors demonstrates this as with the case of Lawrence Olivier and Ben Kingsley, among many others.... His importance rivaled that of othello and the role is considered plum in all respects.... Perhaps, with the exception of Hamlet, its characters – Othello, iago and Desdemona - have been the subjects of most analysis out of all of Shakespeare's characters....
5 Pages (1250 words) Research Paper

Othello's Analysis

Iago is angry because Cassio has been promoted by Othello, and iago wanted that job.... Roderiuo and iago wake him up to tell him that his daughter has been taken away to be the wife of Othello.... He sees the relationship between othello and Desdemona simply in terms of passion and lust.... Iago is very insensitive to othello and he shows that he is intolerant of Othello's cultural and racial origins.... iago: Act I, iii, 356-382....
3 Pages (750 words) Essay

Attitude Gender in Shakespeares Play Othello

Whether the marriage is consummated, when it is consummated, and what the significance of this consummation is for othello and Desdemona have all been an important source of debate about the play.... Othello, iago, and Desdemona have been loved and loathed, defended and attacked, judged and exonerated by critics just as they are by characters within the play.... Reacting against these traditionalists, "iago critics" (Eliot, Empson, Kirschbaum, Rossiter, and Mason, as well as Fiedler and Leavis) take their cues from iago....
3 Pages (750 words) Essay
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us