Othello and Racism Essay

In conjunction with Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, Othello is said to be one of the four great tragedies written by Shakespeare and consequently a mainstay of what is said by most critics to be the peak of Shakespeare’s theatrical talent. Othello is exceptional in the midst of Shakespeare’s grand catastrophes. Not like Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, which are put up in opposition to a setting of political affairs and which resound with propositions of widespread individual apprehension, Othello is situated in a clandestine world and centers on the infatuations and private lives of its chief figures. Othello basically is the central character as well as the hero of the play under consideration. Being a Christian Moor and general of the armies of Venice, Othello is a well-expressed and actually controlling figure, who everyone around him respects a lot. In the face of his prominent status, he is all the same easy victim to insecurities due to his age, his existence as a soldier, and his race. Analysis The chief character of this play goes by the name of Othello, and he seems to be a person who has an unconventional and open personality, which is used by his ensign Iago to dispose of his love for his partner, Desdemona, into an authoritative and reproachful cupidity, which turns him into an assassin. Insensible of Iago’s manipulative and the lucent incorruptibility of his wife and lieutenant, Othello is sooner or later a victim of his own credulity and unyielding unawareness. But the most prominent theme is that whatever was faced by Othello was due to the fact that he did not belong to the Elizabethan civilization and was a â€Å"black moor†. As we know, Othello is presented as a Black Moor who is the furthermost General of the Army in Venice. He is intellectual, audacious, and praiseworthy. The wedding that takes place between him and the fine-looking Desdemona, who is the daughter of a well-known Venetian, aggravates racial affront in opposition to him. In the Elizabethan times, there was much racial discrimination against blacks and moors. But even though the vain hero of this play faced racial prejudice, he keeps on living with courteousness and sense of worth as he shows the way to an army in opposition to Turks on Cyprus. His perseverance to sense of duty is obscured only by his commitment to Desdemona, who makes her way to Cyprus with him. The love Othello has for his wife is so deep and passionate that he cannot bear even the contemplation of a different man even looking at her. And in that lies his weak point, which is resentment. Othello’s consideration to the theme turns out to be apparent when Iago makes use of it as confirmation that Desdemona could never be truthful to a person who does not even belong to their society and is a person who is so â€Å"unnatural†. The self-assurance felt by Othello that was once so strong is with ease tattered by Iago’s propensity to persuade him that he is second-rate in comparison to the men of Venice. The vain hero of the drama Othello is a Moor who prevails the compassion of Desdemona with his vigorous tales of encounter and escapade, adding to the disappointment of her father and the Venetian court of which they are a component. Othello is happily married with his wife. After certain happenings take place, the stratagem takes place rather speedily when Iago, a subsidiary of Othello, sets his mind for taking revenge after he does not get the promotion that he really wanted. He figures out plans to set Othello against his own wife. What takes place after this is a succession of maneuverings in which Iago gradually persuades Othello of Desdemona’s faithlessness and that she has something going on with Cassio, the lieutenant who gets raised to the position that was sought after by Iago. The basic point here is that Othello was used by Iago in a way this his own race was used against him. Othello was made to realize that his chances of being loved by Desdemona were low for the fact that he did not even belong to their civilization. Readily in Othello, the central character, Othello, can be made out as an archetypal tragic hero who is conflicted by the brawny force of his instinctive gullibility and over-trust as defects in his otherwise honorable character. All the way through the speedy expansion of the play, we see Othello’s character fall to pieces as a consequence of his increasing resentment and are at last incapacitated by a commanding catharsis where in spite of his bad behavior; the person who reads feels compassion for Othello and his calamity. In this catastrophe of character, the prevalent bereavement and dread can be undoubtedly accredited to the foreseeable fault in the personality of Othello, the heartrending hero. Straight away the wicked character of Iago is set up and discovers the hero’s disastrous flaw; eventually that of simplicity. He hath a person and a smooth dispose, to be suspected, framed to make women false. The Moor is of a free and open nature, that thinks men honest, but that seem to be so, and will as tenderly be led by th’ nose, As asses are†. (Shakespeare, lines 440-445). Even though no time is wasted by Shakespeare in converting the honorable central character almost unbelievably into a thoughtless and cruel murdered of his wife who does not have any faith what so ever in her, one must bear in mind the fact that he is up in opposition to, moderately convincingly, the most resourceful archvillian in literature. Being the malevolent, but shrewd human being that he is, Iago does every single thing that he can think of so as to intensify the effects of the hero’s heartbreaking flaw and make such attempts that it would work against him. The most manipulative characteristic of Iago’s stratagem are persistently seen all the way through the play, when he delicately makes his own image better than all others while harming the other people’s image. The expansion of Othello is basically focused in the order of the mounting covetousness of the adversary as the medium with which his disastrous imperfection gets hold of his breakdown. As a consequence of Othello’s unquestioning personality, Iago’s monstrous thoughts are permissible to break through into his more often than not unsuspicious mind and in that distort his judgment and actions all the way through the course of the play. As an outcome of the wholesomeness and certainty in the love amid Othello and Desdemona, Othello is incapacitated with heartache when it is recommended that Desdemona has been disloyal to him. At first he does not wish to believe it, but handing over deceitful Iago to the charge of discovering the truth without doubt buries him deeper in dishonesty. Poor Desdemona is killed over a crime she had never even thought of. But here the play shows that Othello’s mind has been taken over completely by Iago’s conniving nature. Eventually when Othello realizes his mistake, he commits suicide, saying, â€Å"I kissed thee ere I killed thee, no way but this, Killing myself, to die upon a kiss† (Shakespeare, line 420-421). Perhaps it would not have been easy for Iago’s scheme to work had there not been the elementary setting of ethnic discrimination in Elizabethan civilization, a prejudice that was felt and sensed by both Desdemona and Othello. Shakespeare’s Desdemona puts up with intolerance by disproving it right of entry to her own life. Her relationship that is shared between her and Othello is that of love, and she is intentionally faithful to that relationship. On the other hand, Othello does not have any knowledge what so ever about how intensely chauvinism has broke in into his own character. This immersed bigotry weakens him with opinions similar to thoughts like he is not good-looking and does not deserve Desdemona. He starts believing that Desdemona does not really love him and even if she does then there has to be something erroneous with her. These feelings, reddened by Iago’s intimations and fabrications, put off Othello from conferring his apprehension and qualms honestly with Desdemona, and in this regard he acts on alarmed supposition. So as to live on the collective ambush of internalized chauvinism and the aimed at malice of Iago, Othello would require to be close to faultless in potency and self-knowledge, and this just is not a reasonable requirement. Racial Discrimination in Othello The basic issue that has been presented in the play is that of prejudice and racial discrimination. Every single human being at some point in his or her life goes through a feeling of complete alienation. This can come up in the form of a new child at school, or those who form a part of a cultural or religious marginal, or as someone who clutches an ostracized estimation. In order go make this problem known to the general public, Shakespeare has made his hero out to be an outsider, a person who does not fairly fit in, in the culture in which he lives nor is he of their ethnic background. Since the very beginning of the play, when the hero is detained in suspicion by a gentleman who impeaches him of seducing his daughter with incomprehensible charms, Othello has been made apart from all of the other characters of the play who belong to the same cultural background. Considering that he has been made out as a person who belongs to an exclusively dissimilar country, much of the discrepancy he puts up with is because of the scheming conviction that he does not fit in with this civilization. In the Elizabethan times, as can clearly be seen from Othello, race was a subject of great dispute and argument. Even in the current times, the dispute keeps hold of its disagreement and enthusiasm. On the other hand, approaches towards ethnicity have taken a spectacular turn at some point in the last century (Racism and Othello). In the current times, people have come to live in a gradually more multi-ethnic society, who would unquestionably be more open-minded and would refuse or even be affronted by racial unfairness to any individual or segments of the society. People have cleanly been labeled as â€Å"racists† in the current times and have also been started to be considered as outcasts. This puts up the questions of what type of meaning Shakespeare wanted to convey to his spectators and was Othello the moor represented as a disastrous hero or did his personality sooner or later come to bear a resemblance to the discrimination of which he was a sufferer. Shakespeare also talks about the question of race with additional characters for instance the detestable Iago and the discrimination concealed deep in Brabantio (Racism and Sexism in Othello, p. , Othello – A Racist Play? , p. 1). The proceedings of Brabantio commence the awareness in the race subject in Act 1 Scene 1 far more than Iago’s tainted abuses for the reason that the kind of concealed racism is in point of fact present in contemporary society. Brabantio criticizes of his daughter even thinking of getting married to Roderigo considering that Roderigo did not have a very good reputation in society but subsequent to listening to Iago inform him that his daughter is going out with a moor he wishes that Roderigo would have married Desdemona. Therefore Brabantio recommends that he would rather have his daughter married to a man who has a bad reputation in the entire society and believes that he is better than a moor who is an appreciated noble and gentleman in the army. As Brabantio believes the only problem that lies with Othello is that he is black and does not belong to their society (Twyman, p. 1). There is a little proof that Shakespeare was using Othello to endorse ethnically discriminatory views as suggested by certain critics. Shakespeare has presented Othello to be a dignified person and a Christian. As an alternative, Iago is represented as the most iniquity bad character and also the terrible racist. Iago considers Othello’ lips as â€Å"thick-lips† (Shakespeare, p. 66) and calls him as â€Å"an old black ram† (Shakespeare, lines 88-89). Even though there might be a few reasons behind the deceitful actions taken by Iago. Even though he does undergo suspicion about whom his wife would be going out with behind his back and he dislikes Othello because of the promotion he gained which was desired by Iago, but from all of his speeches, the thing which is most obvious is the fact that he dislikes Othello because of the color of his skin. By putting forward to us the scoundrel of the play to have such deep-seated bigotry; Shakespeare is disapproving all of the people who attack others purely because of the color of their skin or their ethnic group or religion. A contemporary spectator would consequently perceive that in their visualization, correctly, Shakespeare has made an attempt to send out an anti-racist point (The Racism in Othello, p. 1). Considering the fact that there was no real reason for Iago to hate Othello, he starts inventing novel reasons to disgust Othello. He comes up with the idea in his own brain that his wife is cheating on him with Othello. Even as this is perceptibly fallacious, it makes it easier for Iago to have a reason to loathe Othello for reasons other than his skin. His annoyance is fairly understandable when he comes out with the declaration â€Å"hell and night / must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light† (Shakespeare, lines 397-98). This outburst does not only demonstrate Iago’s disdain for Othello, it obviously illustrates the satirical switching of issues to the matter of color once again (Racism in Othello, p. 1). Conclusion In the light of the above discussion we can hereby culminate that Othello is a play written by Shakespeare in which we see how a man full of courage and bravery is tricked upon by the villain of the play. Racial discrimination is a theme that is very prevalent in the play and tells us of how outsiders in the Elizabethan times were treated.