In Shakespeare’s Othello, race is a concept that is only minimally explored. Characters in the play assume that, since they are English, they are superior and foreign characters (like Othello the Moor) are inferior. This is not questioned much at all, and in fact it is assumed outright that Othello is indeed a lesser man because of his skin color and the ways in which characters like Iago and Roderigo treat him. While an early modern audience would accept this concept without hesitation, an audience of today’s age is left to question whether Othello is actually acting out because of the societal pressures, beliefs, and actions put upon him, or because he is inherently different as a person who is not white. While Shakespeare seems to think the contrary, Othello’s development in his actions and words—from a confident general to a depressed, wife-killing maniac—show clearly that his demise and his reactions were products of his peers (namely, Iago) and that he is not inherently different because of his race. Ultimately, it was all Iago’s fault.
Edwards, Philip & Kenneth Muir. Aspects of Othello. New York, NY: University of Cambridge Press, 1978.
Othello’s speech to Brabantio and the Duke in Act 1, Scene 3 is of major importance in describing Othello’s personality. This long speech, found in lines 149 to 196, shows Othello for the first time as a person with depth and less as a soldier. This speech is important to the book as a whole because it is a testimony to the strength of the love between Othello and Desdemona, which will later play a major role in the plot. It is also one of the first times that we see Othello trying to influence his audience with his words. The speech given by Othello is intended to convince Brabantio that Desdemona is with him willfully, and not by “spells and medicines bought of montebanks” (line 74).
Othello is one of Shakespeare?s prime examples of an ?other?, someone who doesn?t truly belong to society by some unfortunate inheritance of ethnicity and race, made worse by the negative stereotypes constructed by the Venetians to apply to outsiders like him. Although Othello is a gifted military hero, a ?worthy governor? (II.i.30) and a ?full soldier? (II.i.36), he is also damned by his color, his blackness. Most of the Venetian insiders, including his wife Desdemona, refer to Othello as merely ?the Moor?, and label him with such blatant insults as ?l...
William Shakespeare’s tragic drama Othello boasts quite a little list of abnormalities in both occurrences and personal behavior.
...Gardner, Helen. “Othello: A Tragedy of Beauty and Fortune.” Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint from “The Noble Moor.” British Academy Lectures, no. 9, 1955.
William Shakespeare’s tragic drama Othello has been given high marks by some critics and low marks by others. Let us elaborate on this problem in this essay.
Othello, a play written by William Shakespeare in approximately 1603, focuses on two opposite characters named Othello and Iago. Othello is a respectable army general who tragically dies in the end. The readers believe that his flaw is jealousy, which ruins his calm and makes him believe Iago, a character nobody should trust. The antagonist of the play, Iago, is a cunning liar who lies and tricks almost every other characters in the play to ruin and manipulate Othello. The play starts on the street of Venice where Iago convinces Roderigo to plot against Othello by planning falsely accuse Othello’s wife, Desdemona, of cheating. Interestingly, another specific detail critics usually look at is that Shakespeare choose to make the character of Othello a dark-skinned man, which was not a common feature a hero should have during the Elizabethan. Some of the common themes in Othello are the role of race and racism, the effects of jealousy, and the differences between genders during the Elizabethan.
In the play ‘Othello’ by William Shakespeare, the tragedy of the play is largely a result of Iago’s animosity towards Othello. Iago’s hatred for Othello emanates from the very core of his being and is further amplified due to Othello’s status as an outsider in the ‘white’ Venetian society. This alone causes Iago to perceive Othello as a threat to society, as he goes against the societal and contextual values of the time. Although Iago is acting and reacting based on his own character traits, he is also acting upon the societal norms and expectations which classified Othello as a threat. The accumulation of Iago's hatred
Snyder, Susan. "Beyond the Comedy: Othello" Modern Critical Interpretations, Othello Ed. Harold Bloom, Pub. Chelsea House New Haven CT 1987.
Palpation of the external ear structures is the next step. The main purpose of palpat...
Snyder, Susan. "Beyond the Comedy: Othello" Modern Critical Interpretations, Othello Ed. Harold Bloom, Pub. Chelsea House New Haven CT 1987. (page 23-37)
The Cold War was a time of great tension all over the world. From 1945 to 1989, the United States was the leader and nuclear power and was competing with the Soviet Union to create huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons. However, even though the Cold War ended, nuclear weapons are still a threat. Countries around the world strive to create nuclear power, and they do not promise to use it for peaceful purposes. Some examples of the struggles caused by nuclear weapons include the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Iran’s recent nuclear weapon program. Surely, nuclear weapons have created conflict all over the world since the Cold War era.