Mask Of Deception In Othello

The Mask of Deception All humans wear a mask of some kind; whether it is a false representation varies from person to person. This reality is revealed in poetic fashion in the piece “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar; the short story “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne and the play Othello by William Shakespeare. While all in different genre’s, they all contain the similarity of deception and creating a mask for the rest of the world to see in order to hide their true self. In the story “Young Goodman Brown”, Goodman Brown experiences everyone around him wearing the mask of Christianity and holiness, and he therefore loses his own faith. In the Shakespearian play Othello, the antagonist, Iago, deceives the Othello by maintaining a mask of honesty

Iago wanted Othello’s position and used others to shame Othello and gain stature. Iago dressed himself up a trustworthy man and worked his way into Othello’s trust with tricks and lies. He wore a very convincing mask; often temporarily defending the person he was trying to ruin to further his honest visage. He says to Othello, “Men should be what they seem…” (3.3.127) through these methods, Iago convinces Othello that Cassio, an officer, was having an affair with Othello’s beautiful wife Desdemona. As a vicious result, Othello is driven mad with anger and sadness and throttles Desdemona in their bed. The death and want left by Iago’s deception is vast hurting everyone involved most frequently on a mortal level. When the truth finally comes out, Othello, in his grief and remorse, ends up stabbing himself with a dagger. In the end, many die due to Iago’s deception, through villainy or despair, and none gain what they truly want because of it. This just goes to show that the mask of deception that a man wears can cause an unbelievable amount of harm, bodily and worse,