Tragedy Punishes the Good in Othello by William Shakespeare - Term Paper Example

Tragedy Punishes the Good In William Shakespeare’s “Othello,” Shakespeare utilizes many archetypes to develop his overall theme of how jealousy can twist a person’s mind until it destroys them and everyone around them. Utilizing the emotion of jealousy in this manner, Shakespeare is able to highlight each character’s motives and demonstrate how each is either compensated for their actions or destroyed because of them. With that said, a close look will be taken into the actions of the characters in “Othello” to determine their fates based upon the confines of a tragedy and to illustrate how this might affect a reader’s understanding of the play’s values. To begin with, Shakespeare does well to involve the reader in the intertwining mess of relationships that begin to pile up on the landscape of “Othello.” In fact, all of the relationships within “Othello” have some degree of jealousy that taints their abilities to judge fact from fiction and spurs them into acting in childish fashions to destroy one another. The grand puppeteer of the play, Iago, has his hand in many of the actions of the characters whom he controls by pushing buttons of jealousy and confusion and has an inherent understanding that to ruin Othello, he must first crumble the world around him. More, this proves to be a task of insignificance for Iago who can pull the strings of his puppets without breaking a sweat. Indeed, Iago is the consummate villain. He is trusted by everyone within the play and is the least deserving of any such reward. Iago’s actions, and consequently the other character’s willingness to obey his every word, can be frustrating for a reader in that his every motive has been laid bare by either soliloquy or internal thought spoken in a manner that only the audience is intended to hear and his path of destruction is clear from the beginning. Thus, the reader knows, form the very start, that Iago intends to destroy anyone who might make an easy target on his ultimate quest of destroying Othello. And worse, the characters make it easy for him. Cassio is literally a static character with no ability to think for himself. At the slightest urging from Iago, Cassio becomes a drunken mess and ruins his standing with Othello. Meanwhile, Iago is playing Roderigo like a puppeteer, convincing him to hold out for Desdemona and to earn money to aid in his efforts of ultimately destroying Othello by convincing him that Desdemona has been unfaithful with his current lieutenant (and the man Othello chose over Iago), Cassio. Ultimately, this leads to Othello’s mistrust in Desdemona as well. A reader might also notice that Shakespeare’s characters are inherently childish. At the slightest provocation, they are willing to believe the worst in their friends and banish them from the circle of trust. It’s an entirely unrealistic view of how the world works and is frustrating for a reader because the characters are so willing to give up everything they believe in, and therefore, everything they love, because of the simple manipulations by Iago. Looking at the character’s actions from a psychological standpoint, only high school relationships hold the mentality for this same temperament where emotions run high and bonds can be broken by childish deeds and actions. Real, adult relationships are not so easily broken. Not the relationships that matter, at least. People who are willing to take a moment and view the situation for all it holds can find that things are not as muddy as they might seem. If any of the characters had taken a moment to pause and one, think about their actions, and two, view the actions of their friends in a calm and adult manner, the truth would have emerged that Iago is the tragic element enacting every bad deed. While jealousy is an emotion usually tainted with misunderstanding and pain, in “Othello,” jealousy is the driving force for the action of the play. The characters’ ability to handle jealousy marks an interesting twist for how a reader will evaluate the tragic elements of the play itself. One might believe that a play such as “Othello” could be judged based upon how the play ends, however, there are no redeeming qualities left to aid a reader in believing anything other than that the characters were a childish bunch; led to kill and destroy one another by the motives and schemes of a grand puppeteer. More, when a tragedy allows an innocent person to be destroyed, it makes it difficult for a reader to reconcile or retain any measure of value for the play’s overall message. For example, Desdemona serves as the plot twist for which Iago manipulates every other character. He gets Roderigo to believe that Desdemona is the path for redemption and happiness; he gets Cassio to believe that Desdemona will help in his journey back into the good graces of Othello, and he gets Othello to believe that Desdemona has been unfaithful with Cassio. Mad and jealous beyond reckoning, Othello essentially orders the deaths of everyone, and in a dramatic moment, kills Desdemona despite her infinite murmurings of loyalty. He believes that ending her was the noble course of action. It’s truly disgusting how easily Othello was manipulated into destroying the love of his life. Never once did Othello chance to believe in Desdemona’s loyalty and never once did he literally question the actions of Desdemona and Cassio as anything other than what he believed them to be. He was led to believe a lie by nothing more than a misplaced handkerchief. Othello’s manipulation by the strings of Iago were based upon the archetype that people are more likely to believe a lie because they fear it to be truthful. Iago, in this, was a master of deception, and fed just enough information to the right parties to get them to turn on one another without so much as a second thought. While this may be the clever writings of Shakespeare, a reader is tormented by the ease at which each character falls into the traps of deception. Moreover, the problem is not that Shakespeare writes a bunch of static characters with no backbones of their own; the problem is that there is nothing redeeming left once the dust settles for which a reader can chew on. Everyone either dies or is gravely punished. And the most tragic element of all is that the only character literally deserving of the punishment of death is Iago, and by the end of the play he is still a free man. He might have some problems, sure, but he gets to live his life without much hindrance while everyone else (who was at least on the neutral side of good) was brutally punished. In many ways, “Othello” can be read as a true tragedy. None of the characters find redemption, and anyone of value of both spirit and loyalty is destroyed. If the definition of a tragic play means that the good are punished by the actions of the evil, then Shakespeare met his mark. However, “Othello,” then, doesn’t seem to have any value other than as a tragic display of a love story gone awry by the evil deeds of a sadistic madman. The true essence seems to be to highlight how easily a relationship can be destroyed, how easily characters can be manipulated, and how easily friends can turn against one another. Shakespeare’s words are not of morality or lessons learned. His words are a tragic example of how not to live life. Further, if for one second, any of the characters manipulated by Iago had taken a true account of the situation at hand, the play would have had a very different ending. If Othello had been a real man and had placed some measure of trust within the woman he claimed to love, he would not then have been her murderer. This moment is, perhaps, the most tragic element of all. For Othello to take his friend at his word for Desdemona’s infidelity, he is putting aside everything he holds dear for one flitting moment of gossip. While it is understandable that he would be hurt by such an accusation, and though the handkerchief was mysteriously in the hands of Cassio, Othello is to blame for not following through as a commander and seriously questioning his friends to find the truth. By utilizing archetypes of emotional import, such as jealousy as a driving plot element, Shakespeare is demonstrating that characters of good morals can be easily corrupted and swayed by characters or dark moral compunction. Never has it been so easy for a villain to take control of the world around him, and never has it been so easy for that villain to come away virtually unscathed. The problem inherent in this moral system is that a reader’s understanding of the values that Shakespeare intended to impart become just as corrupted as the characters of good moral standing. Just like Othello, the reader is led on a moral ride of confusion and betrayal because, at the core of every good story is a message that a reader can come away with. More, just like Othello, the reader is taken on a tragic quest where it becomes easy to question the motives of Desdemona and Cassio because Iago represents such a prominent narrator. In many ways, this is Iago’s story. At every turn, he masterminds a plan and the other characters react just as he anticipated. Worse, at every turn, Iago seems to get exactly what he wanted from the situations presented to him. While things don’t turn out exactly as he wanted, ultimately Iago’s main arc, his main plan to destroy Othello, was a complete success. In this, the bad guy wins. No one of good moral values is left standing. And the ultimate evil of the play gets his wish. This begs the question: what was Shakespeare’s grand plan if not to illuminate the destruction of the virtuous and the celebration of the evil? One can assume, since “Othello” is a tragedy that the ultimate message of the play will not be one of beauty or celebration; however, there would be some value in adding compensation for the good of heart—like Desdemona—to allow the reader to walk away with some semblance of the power of morality. More, Shakespeare’s play “suggests that the human mind in itself is prone to nurture ‘monstrous’ and ‘foul’ imaginings and that people often act perversely, even without a demonic catalyst” (Hall 103). Thus, even without Iago’s urging, a reader could assume that Othello would, at some point in the future, make the same decisions based upon his emotional temperament. As prone as he is towards jealousy, it wouldn’t be long before Desdemona’s relationship with any one of Othello’s soldiers could seem enough of a betrayal to set Othello off in a jealous rage. On an entirely different level, Shakespeare “implicates {the audience] in this theme; on one level, Othello encourages them to cultivate what Iago calls ‘Foul disproportions, thoughts unnatural’ through constructing as ‘monstrous’ the sexual union of the black man and the white woman” (Hall 103). In this manner, Shakespeare not only alienates his audience by presenting them with a tragic outcome for the ‘heroes,’ but also makes the audience as culpable for Othello’s madness as Iago. Essentially, because the audience knows as much as Iago and is taken on his journey, more so than any other character, that they know what will transpire in Othello’s life before he does. More, because the audience is given so much of Iago’s motivation, it becomes easy to side with the evil in the play on an unintentional level. Further, what Shakespeare has created for his readers is a world in which the most evil is rewarded while the most pure are destroyed. And without even realizing that they are doing so, the reader will begin to understand Iago’s plight and find captivating the ease at which he manipulates every character within the play. He’s an evil mastermind, to be sure, but his emotions run deep and his motivations seem reasonable once he explains his true rationale for behaving in the manner that he does. Because Iago is presented in this way, and because the audience is led on his emotional journey in the manner that they are, Iago becomes the most complex of every character within the play. It is at this moment where a reader will begin to feel confusion at their understanding of the morality of the values portrayed within the play. Ultimately, Shakespeare’s tragic elements affect a reader’s understanding of the values because the characters are not punished according to their deeds. It is in this, that Shakespeare has created the complete tragedy. Overall, William Shakespeare’s “Othello” is a true tragedy in that not only do characters undeserving of death meet the grim reaper, but the audience is left with an overwhelming sense of despair for the good as well. Shakespeare does well to utilize many archetypes that assist in the development of his overall theme of how jealousy can twist a person’s mind until it destroys them and everyone around them. By manipulating prose in this manner, Shakespeare is able to highlight each character’s motives and demonstrate how each is either compensated for their actions or destroyed because of them. After taking a close look into the actions of the characters in “Othello,” it can be seen that Shakespeare’s tragic elements might affect a reader’s understanding of the play’s values. Ultimately, a reader might believe that people of poor character will come out safely, while people of good morals are nothing more than mindless pawns awaiting their certain doom. Works Consulted. Hall, Joan Lord. Othello: A Guide to the Play. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Shakespeare, William. The Collins Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Bishopbriggs, Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994. Read More