Othello - Character Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Othello - Character Analysis - Essay Example With this dark side he is also very extroverted, and not very bright. He isn't observant and the schemes of Iago work well on him. Though he doesn't brood too much on his past, except occasional ventures of wars fought, he does let his emotions run his life. "Othello's condition as a black man--whatever shade of blackness he was--is further complicated by his condition as a colonial subject who wishes to adopt western culture. The play dramatizes the apparently unlimited possibilities of self-fashioning available to man in the Renaissance, only to deconstruct this optimistic self-fashioning or self-creation when race issues come into play. It is Iago's exploitation of the politics of colour and of Othello's double nature (proper to a colonial subject) that brings about Othello's downfall." ( Ana Mara Manzanas , Miscelnea: A Journal of English and American Studies Vol. 17 ,1996) For all the dangers and encounters he has been involved in, this man is still naive of the corruptness of people around him. Othello has a trusting nature in which he gives it all. He put all his trust in Iago during times of war and during Othello's marriage to Desdemona. This wasn't very wise of Othello, even if he wasn't trusting or more corrupt he still wouldn't realize Iago was lying. Everyone considered Iago as honest, and would be out of character for Othello to believe any different. One Othello's strong characteristic is the ability to take control over any situation. For example, when Barbantino comes to kill him he shows astounding power by saying: "Hold your hands, both of you of my inclining and the rest. Were it my cue to fight, I should have known it without a prompter" (I, ii, lines 80-3) Through the whole first act he is portrayed as a man with so much power and natural leadership and the drastic change in his personality towards the end is unbelievable. For example, when Lodovico had witnessed Othello hit Desdemona, he said: "Is this the noble Moor whom our full Senate Call all in all sufficient Is this the nature Whom passion could not shake whose solid virtue The shot of accident nor dart of chance could neither graze nor pierce" (IV, i, lines 264-8) Another place where Shakespeare shows Othello taking control over a situation is when Cassio and Montano are fighting after Roderigo antagonized him. You must feel sorrow for Othello because with all the power he has and the endless trust he gives, you try to reach out and show him the truth. Taylor makes an apt comparison with King Lear and Hamlet as follows: "There is no ferocity in Othello; his mind is majestic and composed. He deliberately determines to die; and speaks his last speech with a view of showing his attachment to the Venetian state, though it had superseded him. Schiller has the material Sublime; to produce an effect, he sets you a whole town on fire, and throws infants with their mothers into the flames, or locks up a father in an old tower. But Shakspere drops a handkerchief, and the same or greater effects follow. Lear is the most tremendous effort of Shakspere as a poet; Hamlet as a philosopher or meditator and Othello is the union of the two. There is something gigantic and unformed in the former two; but in the latter, everything assumes its due place and proportion, and the whole mature powers of his mind are displayed in admirable equilibrium". ( COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1822, Table Talk, Dec. 29). Othello had a dominant streak of jealousy in him. He was told