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Othello’s very last words in the play are “I kissed thee ere I killed thee. No way but this,/Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.” (Act V, Scene ii, Lines 358-359)
Othello feels very guilty and regretful after he finds out that Desdemona had not actually been unfaithful to him. He believes that he should have given her the benefit of the doubt rather than just murder her because of what someone else had told her. This lesson, that you should not just believe everything you hear, is also shown in The Arabian Nights.
“When I heard my son’s words and saw him trembling and weeping, O Commander of the Faithful, I realized that I had killed my wife wrongfully and that she had died unjustly; the accursed slave, hearing about the apples from my son, had slandered her and lied about her. When I realized that, I wept and made my sons weep with me, and when this old man, my uncle and her father, came in, I related to him what had happened, and he wept and made us weep with him till midnight, and for three days afterward we mourned for her and grieved over her unjust death, and all because of that black slave.” (The Story of the Three Apples, page 153)
This man was told by a slave that his wife had cheated on him with this slave with very little evidence of just this stranger’s word. The man believed the slave and went home to murder his wife just like Othello believed Iago and went to murder Desdemona for her thought unfaithfulness. When the man had found out after the wife’s death that she wasn’t actually unfaithful to him, he immediately regretted his decision and mourned the death of his wife. This shows that both this man and Othello believed someone they should not have over their own wife, and regretted the unjustly deaths that were bestowed upon each of the women.
