Isolation In Othello

Imagination of Castration Causes Fixation on Flirtation

Even from men of noble and established nature, men, regardless of circumstance, can be transformed into irrational compulsive monsters due to jealousy. While different people become jealous due to different contexts such as cynical observation and external betrayal, the outcome seems to be quite similar: damage is done to the victim’s livelihood. By accusing their wives of being unfaithful, Othello and Leontes create reason to express in words what they fear most: the idea of their wives making love to other men. They utilize their own sexual distress as basis for obsessive blame that eventually transcends what they secretly fear. What was first imagined sexual infidelity of their wives

Othello is one of the more romantic figures in Shakespeare’s works and tells fantastical tales of his strange life of adventure and exotic lands, which is what swoons Desdemona to marry him in the first place. She says she “saw Othello’s visage in his mind” and is able to look past his blackness and appreciate the brilliance of his imaginative mind (I.iii.247). However, Othello’s imagination is ultimately what causes him to become jealous. Through careful construction of images in Othello’s imagination, Iago has convincing power to drive Othello into a jealous state of rage. When Othello asks for ocular proof of Desdemona’s infidelity, Iago instead gives him imaginary depictions of Cassio and Desdemona, which to Othello are deems as the truth. As Othello’s sensible mind starts to decline, these images dictate his judgments and he becomes so engulfed with the evidence presented to him that he easily believes in Iago’s negative portrayal of Desdemona. When Othello asks Iago if Cassio can be trusted, Iago merely instead talks about infidelity, cuckoldry, and disloyalty to let Othello’s imagination run wild. Eventually, Othello chastises Iago since his mind is imaging the many possibilities that could’ve

Instead, Leontes’s fear of emasculation (of becoming a cheated on) throws him into a premature conviction of infidelity. Leontes even goes to the extent of questioning “Mammilius, Art thou my boy?” despite the fact that Mammilus has a striking resemblance to Leontes. We know that Leontes is overwhelmed with doubt and his imagination runs wild to the extent of wondering whether he is even the biological father of Mammilus and his unborn child.

We also notice that the quality of Leontes’s speech is affected by his jealousy. He claims he has tremor cordis, a palpitation of irregular rapid heart beating. By doing this, Leontes identifies with great specificity how he is feeling by relating it to a scientific sensation. There are many pauses in his speech marked by commas and line breaks in the middle of sentences.

This broken, barely articulated syntax gives his speech a choppy irrational effect that mirrors his distressed emotional state, almost as if he was having a heart attack. Leontes has become so consumed with this imaginary affair between his friend and wife that everything he says lacks the fluidity one would expect from a formerly eloquent