ACT 3, SCENE 3 Introduction This scene (Act 3, Scene 3) is when the play changes. We no longer expect Iago’s plan which is to “Make the Moor thank me, love me and reward me. For making him egregiously an ass And practising upon his peace and quite Even to madness”, to fail or for Iago to give up, because, after putting poisoning ideas in Othello’s mind, the rest is easy. Othello’s thoughts of Desdemona will never be the same again. He’ll always doubt her, for ever.
Race also determines how Othello perceives himself as a rough outsider, though he is nothing of the sort. Othello's race sets him apart, and makes him very self-conscious; it makes him work hard and look carefully after his reputation, so he is regarded as equal to the white people that surround him. Pride Especially important with regards to Othello; Othello is defensively proud of himself and his achievements, and especially proud of the honorable appearance he presents. The allegations of Desdemona's affair hurt his pride even more than they inflame his vanity and jealousy; he wants to appear powerful, accomplished, and moral at every possible instance, and when this is almost denied to him, his wounded pride becomes especially powerful. Magic Usually has something to do with Othello's heritage.
Throughout the play, he is manipulative, deceptive controversial, and often without a clear motive. It is because of this questionable personality and ruthless disregard of morals and honesty that makes Iago the most interesting character in the play. Iago is a heinous character and by no means halfwitted. His villainous character in accordance with intellect makes Iago a very powerful character. He exploits the advantages of passive aggressive manipulation, as a means of achieving so called retribution for Othello's overlooking of his promotion as lieutenant.
Iago, to everyone else, seems like an honest and good man who will do everything in his power to help those around him succeed, but is really just power-hungry, two-faced and manipulative. He is, however, clever, cunning and philosophical, which can be accepted as positive traits. It is these traits that enable him to gain an insight into human nature, and ultimately exploit it, destroying the lives of those around him. Cassio is a character whom the audience don't know much about, but from the story they can understand that he loves his job as a lieutenant, and cares a lot about his reputation. This becomes clear after he is fired from his position, as he says to Iago; "Reputation, reputation, reputation!
To others, he is a talented actor, as they are completely fooled by his façade of honesty. He appears humble to Desdemona, when he implies that he is not intelligent ‘but indeed my invention comes from my pate as birdlime does from frieze’. To Othello, he appears truthful, hiding his malicious intent. He appears to offer kindly advice, deceiving Othello utterly. This is evident from Othello's periodical exclamation of trust-‘kind and honest Iago’.
He is manipulative and cunning. He is an excellent judge of people and their characters, and uses this to his advantage. However, like most villains, Iago is ‘two-faced’, he is not what he appears and this provides a sound alibi for his plans. Iago is also very dominating, he strives to succeed and reach his objectives. However, it is the way in which he goes about this that is unique and what makes him the extraordinary character he is.
Othello has his own ego which he carries and shows it on everyone. Though he has an ego he is very polite and so he is respected among others. In the play it is seen how Cassio, Iago, Desdemona and rest of the characters respect him. Because of this ego Othello easily falls into Iago’s play to kill Cassio. Othello is used as a puppet in Iago’s dirty play and doesn’t realize whatever he was doing was wrong.
By doing this, he manages to calm the storm of a crowd. From this point he starts with the argumentation. By planting doubt of what Brutus has said, this gives a huge advantage for Antony with the crowd. Antony creates mixed feelings in the crowd by using a pun on “grievous” and “grievously”. The most contradictory figure of speech used is the phrase “For Brutus is an honorable man” which is repeated many times throughout the text.
Characters like Iago with little pride let their thirst for pride overtake their judgment about what is right. Characters like Othello with a great deal of pride are easily manipulated, because they are so proud. Othello lets pride get the best of him, and this clouds his judgment to such an extent that he ends up murdering his wife because he falsely believes that she has been unfaithful to him and he feels humiliated as a result. Throughout Othello, an ordered structure is placed on this play to convey a sense of order as was required in an Elizabethan context owing to the significance of order, hierarchy and class. This can be seen at the end of the play when there is a need for Othello to be redeemed in the audiences’ eyes hence even Othello as a
In Macbeth’s as well as Shakespeare’s thinking, all people in this life are just bad, stupid actors- shouting and running about and generally making a lot of noise and fuss but not much sense, and then they die anyway and become completely meaningless. With another metaphor, he considers his life is not different from an idiot's tale which is full of bombast and melodrama, but without meaning. Shakespeare may be so depressed when he wrote these final lines that he considers life as walking shadow and not real enough. In my opinion, when writing these lines, Shakespeare want to send us a message that life is something that we have to take as it comes and it is unpredictable, when being brought to life we have to accept it and to necessarily beautify it. The naked truth is