Humanities & Classics 1002
|
|
Renaissance Forum
Humanities & Classics 1002 |
    |
|
The Shakespearean movie "Othello" brought so many feelings out of me. The actors were so convincing, and the moods brought out were so very deep. The one question I would like to answer to this is "who's play is this, Othello's or Iago's?" Well, that is a deep question to answer, and there isn't any way of how to answer it without weighing out the roles of the two characters.
First, let's look at the character of Iago. He was supposed to be this perfect soul of a man, one that was so honest and loyal to his Othello. Yeah, that sure wasn't true. Iago was such a quick thinker and always convincing to look at the evil in the most innocent people. Every time Iago's plans backfired, he had to make up another excuse to keep on believing whatever he wanted them to. The main question brought up in my mind was, how could he have so much anger and hate inside to cause so much pain and harm to everyone else? I just didn't understand how he could ever want to cause so much doom to the lives of the perfect and happy couple of Othello and Desdimona, especially since Desdimona was one of the most loyal and innocent creatures of the play. She loved her man so much. This just goes to show another good point I had wanted to bring up, but I will talk about it later. Iago had so many people fooled into his words of evil, but what were his reasons for doing such harm? Iago had gotten what he deserved in the end, but was also satisfied with the outcome as well. His plan had worked of getting rid of all the people he seemed to hate. He actually seemed very pleased at his work when he was at the foot of Desdimona and Othello's bed with the dead bodies of his wife, Othello and Desdimona. He had a small sly grin on his face when he saw what great work his deceiving self had done. I don't think that Iago had any feelings of love for anyone. He obviously didn't love his wife at all due to the coldness he had always shown to her. And he was never a true friend to anyone, yet he used them into believing they were the best of friends, just to use them and get them into turning everyone else against them and brought much harm to them. To sum this up, I think that Iago had a great impact on this play and may have been more of his than Othello's.
As for Othello, he was a great man of his time. The greatest Renaissance man of his country. He had so much power, wisdom and skill that was so greatly displayed in his character and his words. But he let the worst enemy of all get to him, jealousy. Iago's brilliant convincing words of false accusations towards Desdimona were so convincing and provided enough evidence, that maybe I would even have to believe them if I didn't know the actual truth. Othello had to have been so confused about what to believe. He had the false evidence right there in front of him, such as the handkerchief falling into the hands of Cassio, the words of Cassio falling in love with someone he doesn't know if he should, the closeness between Desdimona and Cassio, and the previous relationship Cassio and Desdimona did share. These are all very convincing facts to think about. Finally, the worst took over Othello, and he led his beliefs of Desdimona's betrayal of him. His biggest downfall of his character was when he couldn't see the truth in Desdimona's eyes, especially when their love was so great and had so much between them. Othello found out the truth at the end, and you could see the pain in his eyes of the love he had for his wife and the greatness he had taken from the world he had lived in, all for believing the words coming from one mouth. I don't think that he had any way of avoiding the situation though. There was nothing to go against Iago's words and actions other than the actual words of Desdimona, and Iago's wife at the end when she knew the truth of the handkerchief. But the truth came out too late. Othello had let his rage lead to the death of his love with his own bare hands.
Because of all of this, I still believe that the play weighed more in favor of being Iago's due to Othello having no way of knowing the actual truth.
These are my thoughts of the question at hand. Thanks for reading them!!
Katie :-)