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Othello Gender Differences

Decent Essays

Omar Elwany
Professor Samya Seth
4/24/2016

How do factors of social and political difference - like race, class, and gender - affect the motivation of characters and influence their thoughts and actions in Othello? Analyze with particular attention to the personal identities and relationships of any two major characters in the play. Othello, a Shakespearean play is a tragedy that revolves around the misuse and longing for power and status. Although at first glance it is not particularly apparent, most characters including Othello, Desdemona, Cassio, Iago, and even Bianca have a relationship that stems from power and status. An example of this lies in the relationship between Iago and his wife Emilia. While reading the play it becomes apparent that those running the show are males while the females are forced to carry along and succumb to the males wishes, ultimately suffering many consequences. Iago being the male takes the masculine gender role and exemplifies …show more content…

I know not if 't be true, But I, for mere suspicion in that kind, Will do as if for surety. Looking back at the history of the word “moor”, the word moor actually refers to those who hail from the north african region of the middle east. North Africans by ethnicity, are often not Black by skin color. That being said, The word moore has often in history been misrepresented and those from any other sub-saharan African country may be reffered to as moores as well. That aside, Shakespear specifically wrote Othello as a moore in multiple occasions, and if he had intended Shakespear to simply be a black man, he woud have wrote the character as such, leading us to believe that maybe othello was not black, and that he might have simply had the comlexion of the modern day arab. This is important because at the time, Arabs and northafricans were seen as hugher in satus and class than any other

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