Othello and Iago - Book Report/Review Example

What makes Shakespeares heroes so unforgettable I guess it is their accented humanities - Shakespeare shows the intricacy of human soul and so complex emotional experiences that a reader is glued to his works. In this regard, Shakespearian "Othello" is one of the most vivid examples of a powerful talent of the author in creation of characters whose personalities concentrate in them the essence of different human virtues and vices, as if serving as magnifying lenses through which we can better recognize different human qualities.

Othello and Iago, the main heroes of the play, represent respectively the human vices of blind jealousy and human wickedness the roots of which is hard to fully explain. But of course Othello and Iago are much more complex personages who entwine the mentioned qualities into a rich and complex canvas of the human soul. Let us overview the characters of Othello and Iago and try to compare and contrast them. The protagonist of the play Moor Othello is the army general, and thus is eloquent and respected.

But his open nature and his situation in terms of his ethnicity, age, and military lifestyle would allow for a terrible manipulation from the side of Iago, who manages to transform the love of Othello for his wife Desdemona into a deadly jealousy. For the most part of the play Othello is absent from the action that revolves around him, and such a position of Othello as a kind of outsider in the play, even despite his honored position, is one of the causes why he is so easily manipulated by Iago.

Indeed, Othello realizes that he is somewhat exotic due to his ethnicity, and, strangely, despite his definite eloquence he even demotes himself, for example saying: "Rude am I in my speech" (1, 3, 91). However, it seems that this statement will become true as in the process of being influenced by Iago he is losing his eloquence to a certain degree. It will be in the closing moments of the play that equanimity will return to Othello again, and his words before his death will impress his audience.

In this way, Othello in the last moments of his life becomes liberated from the factors that spoiled his life - Othello's internal controversy as of a man who confronts a foreign culture, and his propensity for self-torturing. These qualities of Othello which at some point we begin to clearly see make him a tragic figure of his own, and not just a prey of Iago. Iago is the chief evildoer of the play, and probably the most depraved personage of Shakespeare. What makes him so terrible is the fact that it is hard to justify his actions.

While in the beginning of the play Iago voices his irritation at Othello because he was not given the lieutenant position, and later he suspects that Othello had had an affair with his wife Emilia, it is not convincing that such motives are sufficient to justify the diabolical plan of Iago, and it may even seem that the mentioned circumstances are only an excuse for his actions. Thus, the fundamental voluntariness of deeds of Iago and his incapacity or lack of desire to reveal his real motivation adds horror to his behavior.

In this situation, it seems that Iago is striving to take revenge on any person on the slightest reason, so that the list of his targets is too large to consider him normal. After all, he apparently enjoys the process of causing human suffering. And in this job he excels - for instance consider his episodes with the silly Roderigo when Iago's manipulative