Shakespeare's Othello is indeed a powerful and impressive character who is tragically brought down by Iago, a villain who goes unnoticed thanks to his great dynamism and intellect until at the very end of the piece. Despite his faults – of which lack of self-knowledge is the most glaring – Othello remains “great of heart” (as Cassio proclaims in Act 5, scene 2) because he is fundamentally a man of integrity. Additionally, the fact that Iago is deceiving everyone is also something to consider before outright condemning Othello's person. At the same time, it must be added that Othello is also “outclassed” by certain occurrences of chance, which the opportunist Iago then exploits. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The first example of Othello being outclassed in terms of intellect is his lack of self-knowledge; it concerns how his military experience affected his logic. In Act 3, Scene 3, he constantly orders Iago to bring him "proof" of Desdemona's infidelity – "Wicked one, be sure to prove that my love is a whore" – and yet he easily takes the handkerchief for ocular evidence when it comes to visual evidence. anything but. This may be related to how he believes that "it is better to be mistreated a lot / than not to know a little." For him, "to have a doubt once / is to be resolved once" -- in other words, he does not hesitate to act and is therefore prone to jumping to conclusions. This is a weakness that Iago is well aware of, and he tricks Othello into turning everything he sees into "evidence" suggesting Desdemona's guilt. But can we really blame Othello for this? His profession as a general led him to a life of "emotional accidents from floods and fields." Because of the “imminent deadly breach,” for him, hesitation can only become a weakness, an opening point for an imminent attack. Iago, on the other hand, slyly admits that “often [his] jealousy / Shapes faults which are not faults”; he even sometimes reminds Othello that he has not yet conclusively proven these insinuations ("I'm not talking about proof yet"). He is clearly aware of the faulty logic at play here, even perversely alluding to it, always with the certainty that Othello, never a man of moderation ("Perplexed in the Extreme") will be too tempted by the desire to be “resolved” and insist that “yet there is more to it.” It is also telling that Iago himself admits Othello's greatness: "Another of his height they have none." " Yet the fact that he can easily transform a good thing into something horrible is only a testament to Iago's power and drive: just as he speaks of "transforming [Desdemona's] virtue in pitch" and speaks of Cassio's vice as being for his virtue a "just the equinox / One as long as the other", he also knows how to transform the "free and open nature" of Othello into its absolute opposite . Othello, a general accustomed to trusting his men in collective wars and a soldier too accustomed to clearly demarcated battle lines, finds his trusting nature exploited by Iago knowing full well that he "thinks men are honest." but seem to be” and therefore knows how easily he can be “led by their noses / as donkeys are In Act 3, Scene 1, we are told that “to hear music, the general”. doesn't much care This has an eerie echo of Iago's earlier statement that he will "lay the pegs that will make this music." More importantly, it highlights the importanceradically different perceptual capacities of the couple. Listening to music was then considered a noble and civilizing attribute, so it is telling that this trait is so conspicuously absent in Othello, an attribute more suited to the battlefield. His sense of discernment is therefore much less astute than that of Iago. One of the most tragic aspects of his downfall is the way his former eloquence is so powerfully overwhelmed by Iago's pornographic barnyard language. From the moment he tells Iago to "give away your worst thoughts/worst words", the relationship between the deterioration of language and the collapse of self-control becomes tragically glaring. Iago’s equivocal language: “Ha! I don’t like it”; “Think, my lord? » -- is projected onto Othello's expression, as he is reduced to incoherent syntax, fragmented sentences and clipped speech: "O, o, o! » ; “Death and damnation!” » ; "Monstrous!" And yet he remains painfully unconscious. After all, his ears are accustomed to the bugles of war and are not able to detect linguistic disintegration such that it can be linked to his own moral deterioration. The ambiguity also carries over into his communication with Desdemona, so that he begins to speak elliptically like Iago -- "I have a pain in my forehead" -- and it is hardly Desdemona's fault that she does not understand its true meaning at all. . Iago perversely mocks him in Act 3, Scene 3 with language taken from the trial scene; for example, he transforms Brabantio's warning that "She deceived her father, and may you" into "She deceived her father by marrying you", thus tapping into Othello's subconscious insecurities. He constantly reminds Othello of his conduct as a non-soldier, knowing that he bases his success as a lover on his success as a soldier; Tellingly, he makes sure to tell Othello that Cassio saw him in his emasculating epileptic attack: "A passion that is absolutely not suitable for such a man." » Iago strikes where he knows it will hurt the most; significantly, he launches his temptation on Othello's exaltation of Desdemona: “Excellent wretch! Perdition catches my soul / But I love you; and when I don't love you, / Chaos returns. This is one of the rare times when Othello admits such total and absolute dependence on others, and Iago thus quickly intervenes to destabilize his new directions. It is also worth noting that Othello is furthermore at the mercy of chance. . Iago admits that his plan will only work "if the consequences approve of my dream"; and approve of it, because chance events like Cassio not mentioning Bianca's name, Emilia finding the handkerchief, and Desdemona unfortunately using the word "suitor" to describe Cassio only cement Othello's downfall as something painfully out of character. of his control. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized article from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Critics like FR Leavis have argued that Othello's success is certain because of his rather despicable flaws, but the final scene gives us reasonable grounds to interpret the hero as someone else. “big-hearted” – a “noble Moor” to the end. It is true that Othello's unraveling sometimes becomes contemptible, as when he publicly strikes Desdemona. But it is also telling that at the very end, his only criticism comes from Emilia, who in turn can be blamed for her lack of objectivity, judging by the overly categorical condemnation: “O seagull! O fool! Moreover, with the death of his beloved mistress and the completely unexpected betrayal of the,.