Othello’s Finale

Act 5 Scene 2 Lines 334-352 are Othello’s final lines of the play before he stabs himself. This passage is emotional and powerful. In the last few minutes, Othello strangled his wife in their bed, on their wedding sheets because Iago tricked him into believing that Othello’s wife Desdemona was cheating on Othello with Cassio. After Othello kills his wife, Iago’s wife Emilia finds out that Iago had planned this all along because he was so desperate for Emilia to give him the handkerchief that Othello gave Desdemona which she dropped in front of Emilia so Iago could use it to make it seem like there was actually an affair going on. When Emilia figures out Iago’s plan, she tells Othello, who unfortunately has already murdered his wife, that Iago set it all up. Othello has had a roller coaster of emotions over the last few minutes, thinking about how he is about to murder his wife, to murdering his wife, then finding out that his wife wasn’t actually having an affair, and that it was all set up by his “friend” Iago. In the last line of the passage, Act 5 Scene 2 Line 351-2, Othello is basically referring to himself as a circumcised dog, just like the Turk that he was speaking about whom he killed earlier in his life. This is because Muslims, in Northern Africa, which is where Othello came from, before converting, practiced circumcision unlike his new beliefs. When he says this right before killing himself, it appears to me that for his life he has considered himself less of a man because of his circumcision. I chose the image above because it shows the scene where Othello kills himself, Desdemona and Emilia are laying dead, and Iago is being arrested for his murderous plot.