Rasism in Othello

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YOUR NAME Teacher CLASS DATE Racism in Othello After a short glimpse into the first act of Othello, the reader would be convinced that the story was obviously prejudice because no description is said of the main character other than of the color of his skin and his body features. In the first scene, the characters do not even call him by his name, but by names such as “the moor”, “black ram”, and other racist slurs. As the story progresses, you discover that Othello is much more than these words that describe him, but never once can you forget that he is different. Even more so than the insulting terms thrown at him about the color of his skin, there are scenes where they describe him as having the same features of animals and beasts. Even though this story has many themes and motifs, this Shakespearean tragic is full of racist descriptions and prejudice remarks. In the opening act, Iago and Roderigo are discussing the protagonist of the show from the dark. However, Othello’s name is never said during the talk, but only words and phrases are used to give the reader a description of him. They repeatedly call him “The Moor” but they also say that, because of his race, he is not even a human or even worth a name. Roderigo calls Othello “thick lips” which is used again later when he is telling Desdemona’s father that “you’ll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse, you’ll have your nephews neigh to you.” Using these descriptions only lead you to view Othello the same way that Iago and Roderigo do, not as his true stature but as a beast. The correlation between animals and dark colored skin becomes a recurring theme in Othello. Roderigo compares the imagery of Othello and Desdemona having sex to “the beast with two backs”, further pushing the image of Othello into the readers mind as something completely barbaric before we even get to see what he
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