Nature Versus … Other Nature? Is Othello a Beast or a Fallen Angel? Or Both?
Comments(3) I have conflicting feelings about basically all the characters in Shakespeare’s Othello (except Roderigo, he’s just pathetic) starting with Othello himself. The general is a victim, certainly, but to what extent is Iago fully to blame for his fall? If another man were subjected to Iago’s cruel tricks would the end result have been the same? Or would he have been able to remain composed and see through the charade? The play begins with Iago and Roderigo depicting Othello as a savage and a beast, someone completely uncivilized. He is a stereotype and a caricature: The Moor. But, the audience is finally introduced to Othello, and we meet a composed, eloquent, and loving person that does not resemble Act 1, Scene 1’s depiction in the slightest.
However, Othello’s character is continuously degraded as his suspicion and then conviction of Desdemona’s infidelity grows. His skills as an orator fall apart, he sees no reason, and he is reduced to a quivering incoherent mess on his knees in front of Iago in Act 4, Scene 1. He hits Desdemona then ultimately murders her, becoming the beast called jealousy personified and living up to Iago’s initial painting of him as a brute and an animal. But, after realizing that he was fooled by Iago and killed his innocent and loving wife under a false belief, he returns to the masterful orator that we see in the start of the play where Othello was able to not only move the audience, but the other characters with his words.
With all the talk of nature within the text, one can’t help but wonder, which of these personalities is Othello’s true nature? Did Iago see something inside Othello that made him recognize the beast he describes in the beginning of the play? Did he somehow know Othello had rage and jealousy in his nature and that this was his Achilles’ heel, that Othello would be susceptible to his trickery and deception if he hit him where it hurts: his marriage? No one can doubt Othello’s civility and sincerity in the first acts of the play. But is this part of his behavior something that he learned to adapt after years of being in Venetian society? Can this polished behavior be undone, leaving the “real” Othello in it’s wake: the warrior, the beast, the murderer.
Or, perhaps the Othello we see plead his case after Desdemona’s father accuses him of witchcraft, the Othello that calmly escorts his wife back to bed after upsetting news from the state instead of smacking her across the face, and the Othello that tells Lodovico, Gratiano, and Cassio to “Speak of me as I am”, is the real Othello. Maybe his fall is meant to be a testament to Iago’s powers of deception: his ability to make people see what he wants them to see, thus forcing them outside their nature rather than having them fall into their true one as the former view suggests. Iago does seem to perform an Inception-like mind-F by planting a seed and letting Othello cultivate it himself, making him believe it was his idea and thus poisoning his view of Desdemona in a stronger way than just straight-up slander.
Or, maybe it is pointless to think about nature in the simple way that the play’s characters do. A man is neither simply a brute nor a scholar; he can encompass the entire spectrum of human temperament, even in the short span of three days. A woman is neither a virgin nor a whore. She can express a healthy sexual appetite without warranting the title of adulteress and being condemned to death, as in poor Desdemona’s case. The only character that seems to grasp this is Emilia, who is an enigma herself. She proposes to Desdemona that the moral lines are blurred when a woman’s infidelity is caused by a man’s promiscuity or abuse and basically encourages her to find someone other than Othello when he proves himself to be a jealous psychopath. However, she is blind to her own husband’s vices and is in fact the cause of that whole handkerchief fiasco that Othello sees as proof that his jealousy is justified and ultimately undoes them all, so who is she to talk right?
All in all, this play is filled with duplicity, and “nature” talk, and its a debacle of epic proportions. I find myself even hating my favorite character, Desdemona, for her love and loyalty to Othello even as she is dying by his hand (also confusing is her three-part death/re-death/resurrection plus speech plus death … again … but that’s besides the point) after showing such independence and ferocity in her choice of Othello over her father.
If my blog post seems like it’s a mess, it’s because my thoughts on this play are. Help me?
I tend to see Othello a flawed hero, in the sense that he has many of the traits of a kind of “overman”, but when things fall apart (the center cannot hold) he is reduced to something even less than a man.
Some of his traits include master oration, reservation of emotion, humbleness (to his superiors as well as his peers and even Desdemona at first), master of combat, and skill with logic and rational thought. Othello even preempts Iago’s venom of words with saying that he does not doubt the virtue of his wife. It is only after his unwavering trust of Iago and some very evil rhetoric and prodding that Othello submits to chaos.
To sum up what I’m trying to say is this: imagine if you have been told that God exists or that 1 1=2 for all your life, and it becomes a part of who you are, and a foundation of the very fiber of your being. Now imagine someone proving you wrong. Or that something such as the sanctimony of marriage is broken, how would you react? Perhaps you’re right in that Othello had demons lurking within him, but don’t we all? I’m not saying to go out and murder your wife, but the trend is to react in brutal ways to brutal wrongs. Love hurts. And I guess for all the grandeur one may have on the outside, there are very similar and very savage passions within us. (Iago’s hate similar to Othello’s provoked hate?)
The concepts of nature, fate, and “the rules” come up routinely in Shakespeare’s plays. Those most apparently fixed in a certain course of conduct are destined to be challenged, one way or another. The question of agency is another recurring theme; to what degree do the characters actually have any capacity for it, and to what degree does each exert it.
To complicate this, characters like Richard III and Iago, who appear at times as puppet-masters exerting their agency upon everyone around them, simultaneously invite being read as Johnny-one-notes, vile characters to the core, and behaving in a constant, fated manner.
I still see Shakespeare pounding away at the paradox and fluidity of identity in each of the plays, the influences external and internal, events, what’s fixed, what’s fluid, the degree of agency available and taken.
Our poor dear Othello is tripped up when confronted by an influence outside of his own paradigm, which is built upon faith (that there’s always a way to survive a situation), confidence (built upon his experience of survival and success), and honor (dignity? which he ultimately metions as his reason for killing Desdemona). None of us can truly predict how we’ll behave in a situation until we’re in it. Sometimes we surprise oursleves to the better, sometimes to the worse.
Othello’s prior success has been the fruit of his tremendous capacity for self-regulation, a function of conservation or the ability to detach himself from the passions of the moment and respond with clarity. His response in the scene Darren mentioned upon being confronted by Brabantio’s sword weilding posse (Act I scene 3?) illustrates this.
He has earlier pleaded with Desdemona to leave him a bit of himself (after telling her she can have anything she asks for). Before he kills her, in Act IV scene 2, he says to Desdemona, in accounting all the depravity he could bear, “I should have found in some place of my soul a drop of patience.”(line 51)
But the realm of love is is an all-or-nothing enterprise; “But there where I have garnered up my heart,/Where either I must live or bear no life,/The fountain from which my current runs/ Or else dries up…”(line 56). Once he has given himself to this state, an unfamiliar one, there is no role for his habitual conservation, and the call to faith is extended beyond what he himself can control.
By fostering that seed of doubt that corrupts his faith, Iago certainly does give him the rope to hang himself with. Othello’s run-in with what to him is foreign turf completely ruptures his identity.
The line he speaks to the Venetians after learning the truth, “That’s he that WAS Othello; Here I am.”(IV. ii. 280) Sent chills down my spine.
I agree that Othello is one dimensional character, this made me suspect that racial discrimination exist well before our time