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Othello's Diverse Themes Essay

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Othello’s Diverse Themes

Othello is one of William Shakespeare’s tragedies which thrives on a group of themes. Let’s see if we can sort them out and determine the dominant ones from the lesser ones.

The pain which the audience experiences is no accident, but rather one of the themes written into the play. Critic Caroline Spurgeon in “Shakespeare’s Imagery and What it Tells Us” explains the significant contribution which imagery makes to the theme of pain and unpleasantness running through the play:

The main image in Othello is that of animals in action, preying upon one another, mischievous, lascivious, cruel or suffering, and through these, the general sense of pain and unpleasantness is much increased …show more content…

Nor is this all. Such jealousy as Othello’s converts human nature into chaos, and liberates the beast in man; and it does this in relation to one of the most intense and also the most ideal of human feelings. (169)

Of course, jealousy of a non-sexual nature torments the antagonist, the ancient, to the point that he ruins those around him and himself. Francis Ferguson in “Two Worldviews Echo Each Other” describes:

On the contrary, in the “world” of his philosophy and his imagination, where his spirit lives, there is no cure for passion. He is, behind his mask, as restless as a cage of those cruel and lustful monkeys that he mentions so often. It has been pointed out that he has no intelligible plan for destroying Othello, and he never asks himself what good it will do him to ruin so many people. It is enough for him that he “hates” the Moor. . . .(133)

Act 1 Scene 1 opens with an expression of jealousy and hatred: Roderigo is upbraiding Iago because of the elopement of the object of his affections –Desdemona -- with the Moor: “Thou told’st me thou didst hold him in thy hate.” Iago responds with an expression of hatred, saying that he does indeed hate the general because he “Nonsuits my mediators; for, ‘Certes,’ says he, / ‘I have already chose my officer.’” Lily B. Campbell in Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes indicates the palpable hatred:

It is then on a theme of

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