The Downfall of Oedipus and Othello - Book Report/Review Example

The downfall of Oedipus is the work of the gods; the downfall of Othello is self-inflicted One cannot agree to the statement that “the downfall of Oedipus is the work of the gods while the downfall of Othello is self-inflicted.” Multiple factors have come into play in both these tragic heroes’ fateful ends. In both the stories of Othello and Oedipus, fate has an important and decisive role to play. In Othello’s life, the hands of fate shadow him the moment he takes Iago as a friend. In Oedipus’s life the whole course of his life is mostly decided by fate. All the same, both Othello and Oedipus lack the wisdom and faith in oneself to arrive upon the right decisions and this personal trait common to them also becomes another major cause for their downfall. This is evident when, in the beginning part of the play itself, Othello repeatedly calls Iago, a honest man, and removes Cassio from his officer post under Iago’s cheating and incitement. Othello says, “I know Iago, thy honesty and love doth mince this matter, making it light to Cassio. Cassio, I love thee, but never more be officer of mine” (Shakespeare, n.d, 1.3) Thus a friend and well-wisher was wrongly punished by Othello because Othello was so easily gullible. In the case of Oedipus also, from his early youthful years itself, he is seen running away from his reality, out of fear of baseless, wild prophesies. So, both these tragic heroes can be viewed as victims of a combination of fate (inflicted by gods) and foolishness. Oedipus is introduced in the play by himself with the words, “I, Oedipus, whose fame all men acknowledge” which have a tinge of pomp in them and reveals the basic character of Oedipus (Sophocles, trans. 2007, Prologue, 6-7). This self-praise is a reflection of his vulnerability to others’ words of praise and slander. This is also an indication that throughout the play, what other people say will be the determining factor of Oedipus’ life. His future is decided by gods, prophets, servants and even the crowd that comments on all the events that happen to him. In the conversation between Oedipus and the people of Thebes regarding the ills that have recently afflicted Thebes, the priest of Zeus puts before Oedipus two solutions, which the priest believes to have equal potential- either to listen to a “heavenly voice” or to “learn from some other human being” who has the experience behind him to solve the crisis (Sophocles, trans. 2007, Prologue, 49-50). But Oedipus chooses prophesy and oracles rather than the second, more reasonable option. This is evidence to the role Oedipus himself plays in his own downfall by choosing gods to decide his fate. He is heard saying, “I were base indeed, if I perform not all the god declares” and later he calls Teresias, the blind prophet, “seer who comprehendest all” (Sophocles, n.d). Thus he posits prophesy as eternal truth, which eventually brings about his own downfall. And, gods, depicted as fond of playing with man’s destiny, have their way with him. Particularly, the ancient Greek gods are infamous for their never so just decisions while dealing with human life. They have been found to be as imperfect and partial as humans themselves. Thinking hypothetically, it can be argued that had Oedipus not left his foster parents, believing Apollo’s words, things might have turned in a different way. He even would never have met his real parents, given the gods did not again revengefully and unreasonably drag his real parents to him. It is also notable that it was in Oedipus’s first journey in search of divine prophecy that his destiny catches up with him in the form of a chance encounter with his real father. But, after hearing the oracle that he would kill his father and sleep with his mother, and believing that Polybus and Merope were his real parents, Oedipus left them to escape his destiny. He never had enough faith in himself to stay back. Thus he threw himself to be a pawn in the hands of fate and thus far it was his fault as well. But once he came under the spell of prophesies and started running away from his self and surroundings, gods led him to his predestined destruction. Thus the roots of Oedipus’s fall reside in his belief in the first prophecy that he heard in Delphi from Apollo (Sophocles, n.d.). Oedipus’s downfall has also been attributed to the psychology of a “lynching mob”by some analysts (Girard and Anspach, 2004, pp.16 of the preface). This reading of Oedipus draws attention to the role the crowd of Thebes plays in cornering and convicting Oedipus (Girard and Anspach, 2004, pp.23 of the preface). Girard and Anspach (2004, pp.23 of the preface) have also quoted Michael Foucault saying that the crowd used past tense while referring to Oedipus once he was found guilty of killing his father. The words of the chorus were, “ he was our bastion against disaster, our honoured king” (Sophocles, n.d, 1200-1202). This shows that the crowd had already passed a judgement on him and hence refers to him as a past king. Thus his banishment had been pre-decided by the chorus, it is argued (Sophocles, n.d, 1200-1202). So, here the responsibility is shifted from gods and Oedipus to the crowd of Thebes who needed a scapegoat to put responsibility on, for the plague that attacked Thebes. In Othello, the Moore of Venice, Shakespeare depicts the story of a highly virtuous man falling prey mostly to his own jealousy and foolishness. But it can also be interpreted that Othello was destined by gods to be vulnerable, jealous and foolish. Though he was virtuous indeed, it was foolish not to know the ways of evil that teems in this world. To get caught in the silly traps laid out by Iago was not becoming of a brave and able man like Othello. Almost in every conversation, Othello calls Iago honest and never does he doubt that Iago might have hidden objectives. It is in this faulty logic that the hands of gods could be held responsible. Also there happened occasions when destiny created circumstances which enforced his false suspicions. For example, when the hand kerchief given by Othello to Desdemona is lost, she lies to him thereby arousing his suspicion more (Shakespeare, trans. 1826, 3,4). Such instances, though stage managed by Iago could have been averted if gods (or the author for that matter!) really wanted to save Othello and Desdemona as it happened in Merchant of Venice or A Midsummer Night’s Dream. From Lodovico’s words in the play, the reader comes to know that Othello was considered “all in all sufficient”, “whom passion could not shake” and “whose solid virtue, the shot of accident, nor dart of chance, could neither graze nor pierce” (Shakespeare,n.d.). This picture of Othello is contradictory to the way he behaves in the play. In this sense also, the hands of fate weigh upon the character. The racist and hateful Iago is also another major factor in the downfall of Othello (Anderson, pp.12). The racial hatred of Iago is so severe that he tells Desdemona’s father, “an old black ram/ is tupping your white ewe” (Shakespeare, 1.1.114-115; Anderson, 2009, pp.12). So, it can be logically argued that Othello was not at all responsible for whatever happened and it was Iago who did all the harm, as the traditional literary criticism would say. But Othello’s inclination towards self destruction is also equally evident throughout the play. This tendency could be considered as having roots in his inferiority complex regarding his black skin and the Black African origin. In between his spells of jealousy, Othello is heard to say, “ I am black, and have not those soft parts of conversation that chamberers have” (Shakespeare, n.d.). So, deeply inside, Othello has an inferior feeling about his black ness which drives him to believe that he was not really worthy of a beauty like Desdemona. It is from this lack of confidence that jealousy sprouts when properly watered by Iago. In the very beginning of the story, Othello is seen observing about the love affair of him and Desdemona in the words, “she loved me for the dangers I have passed and I loved her that she pitied them” (Shakespeare, n.d, 1.3). These words stand as evidence to the fact that Othello had never perceived the real depth of their love and he believed that it was only his heroic acts that made Desdemona love him. This lack of understanding shown by Othello is the basic cause for him to become an easy prey for Iago’s manipulations. Thus, to this extent, Othello’s problems are self-inflicted as well. Literary criticism has never succeeded to arrive upon a consensus regarding what brought about Othello’s or Oedipus’s downfall. Apart from the traditional viewpoint of posing Othello as a noble man, who fell victim to the scheming Iago’s vices, some critics saw Othello as a “self-centered, self-dramatising figure” while some others thought him as someone “ruined by loss of faith” (Leavis F.R. and Gardner, Helen quoted by Croft, 2004, p.17). Oedipus is a more dramatic and metaphorical character than Othello. This character shows us also that self knowledge could be dangerous and even fatal and comes with a very high price. The blindness of Theresias, the oracle-teller and also that of Oedipus towards the end of the play emphasizes this aspect- the price one has to pay to ‘see’ the truth (Griffith, 1996, p.5). With this interpretation, the downfall of Oedipus becomes a metaphor and gets out of the frame of human or divine action and responsibility. It becomes a representation of the complex human behavior which evades truth till one gets face to face with it. The lives of Oedipus and Othello have lots of things in common than apparently perceived. Among them, the foremost factor remains the influence of fate, or to say, gods. All the attempts that Oedipus makes to escape the prophecy become futile in the end. Similarly Othello fails to see truth despite all the love that Desdemona showers on him. Desdemona had an advantageous position to convince Othello, which was even well-positioned than what Iago had. The way she perseveres all the abuses poured on her by Othello, could have been melted the hatred of even a man who had a heart of stone. But still Othello was blinded by jealousy to her love. People like Emily and Lodovico also fail to make him see light (Shakespeare, n.d). Such extreme blindness towards truth can only be explained as fate. Shakespeare’s characters have always possessed this ambiguity which fails black and white explanations. The reason is that they are very close to human reality. For that matter, in all the works of this legendary author, the characters continue to puzzle the readers through centuries and generations and evade a singular explanation. Hence, it can only be said that the woes of Othello and Oedipus were partially the work of gods and partially self-inflicted. References Anderson, A. (2009) Othello-A Racist Play?, Munich: GRIN Verlag. Croft, S. (2004) Othello, Gloucestershire: Nelson Thornes. Girard, R. and Anspach, M.R. (2004) Oedipus Unbound: Selected Writings of Rivalry and Desire, Stanford University Press. Griffith, D. (1996) The theatre of Apollo: divine justice and Sophocles' Oedipus the King, Canada: McGill-Queens Press. Shakespeare, W (1826) The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet. Hamlet. Othello ( Samuel Weller Singer, Edmond Malone and Charles Symmons, Eds.) C.Whittingam. Shakespeare, (n.d) W. Othello, the Moore of Venice, Retrieved from http://shakespeare.mit.edu/othello/full.html Sophocles (2007). Oedipus the King (Ian. C. Johnston, Ed.). Arlington: Richer Resources Publications. Sophocles, (n.d.) Oedipus Rex, Retrieved from http://www.ancient-mythology.com/greek/oedipus_rex.php Read More