Shakespeare's Othello and current life.

Initially, getting immersed in a literary masterpiece with the aesthetic beauty and the extraordinary realization of William Shakespeare’s Othello implies to deepen into details which help you approach the causes that propitiate the harsh unraveling of the story in order to analyze them and utter an opinion that helps other readers discern the motivation of the characters. Othello, a play well known worldwide, is a tragedy settled in Venice and Cyprus during the Renaissance. It is a story about love, jealousy, envy, slander, self-deprecation, racism and praise, where the main character, Othello, the Moor of Venice, is constantly tormented by the idea of being a cuckold; an idea that is instilled by Iago, the ensign and villain of the story. Everything starts when Cassio is promoted to Lieutenant by the Moorish general Othello. Iago feels envy and rage because he was waiting to be promoted himself. Due to this, he planned revenge against Othello and Cassio; and, as Othello has secretly married Desdemona – the daughter of the Venetian Senator Brabantio – Iago uses her for his revenge. Using his machiavellian intelligence, Iago makes Cassio fall into disgrace through an incident in which he loses his Office. After that, he convinces Cassio that the only way of recovering his class is with the help of Desdemona. So, while Cassio is talking to Desdemona, Iago makes Othello see them together. And, from that moment he plants seeds of doubts and jealousy in Othello’s mind concerning Desdemona’s fidelity. (Iago defames Desdemona – the innocent wife of Othello – and Cassio – the honorable lieutenant – by blaming them on deception (betrayal), then, telling Othello they were guilty of it.) With his evil wit and sagacity, Iago gradually contaminates Othello’s mind until he persuades Othello to commit murder. The Moor, blind because of his jealousy and fury, does not realize that all are just Iago’s humbugs and consummates his horrid crime strangling Desdemona in her bed. Afterwards, the truth about Iago gets leaked out, and Othello faced with the shame of having murdered the innocent Desdemona, stabs himself in front of Cassio and dies on Desdemona’s bed, kissing her and by her side.

The tragic end of the play is one of the characteristics that make it so controversial and popular among readers. As it seems, plots that stand out the weaknesses of people and have unfortunate endings, are eagerly accepted due to the fact that they awake people morbidity; and here, lies the real importance and geniality of Shakespeare’s works, in the universality of his plays. Indeed, Shakespeare wrote Othello in the 16th century but its themes are present in our daily life. Love, jealousy, slander and discrimination are universal and, they are still relevant at the present time. They are the every day topics of soup operas (Engañada, Gata Salvaje), films (Unfaithful, An Indecent Proposal, Natalia de 8 a 9), novels (Open secrets: a true story of love, jealousy and murder), an other different works of our century. Othello itself has been adapted to the big screen several times to be suitable for modern audiences, because the themes the play stand out are very attractive to our modern society, regarding to this Kenneth Gross asserts in his article Slander and Skepticism in Othello that: “…Othello is indeed a drama thoroughly obsessed with questions about defamation and praise, with the place or rumor, report, tale-telling, mockery, criticism, with how a person takes these things, with how these things take a person…”.

Tragedies like Othello’s are very current; indeed, whenever we open the daily newspapers, we find news about murders, suicides and violent assassinations. Among these awful tragedies, there is a great percentage of passion crimes: “Desperate man killed his wife and then committed suicide.” (Region, May 12th, 2004, p. 24. Our Translation); “Woman murdered her husband for jealousy.” (El Tiempo, June 23rd, 2004, p. 37. Our Translation); “Overwhelmed by her marital problems she decided to commit suicide.” (El Tiempo, July 20th, 2004, p. 35. Our Translation). People driven by their anger and jealousy take away their partners’ lives and their own without thinking twice about it. So, it is convenient to ask ourselves: Did these people really love each other? Because, as we could find in Love as a Dynamic Force in Shakespeare Sonnets, “In Shakespeare’s love sonnets numbers 116,130 and 147, love is depicted as an overwhelming force that triumphs over time, the physical world, and reason, respectively.” Likewise, the universal definition of perfect love says:

“…Love is very patient and kind, never jealous or envious, never boastful or proud, never naughty or selfish or rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or touchy. It does not hold grudges and will even not when others do it wrong. It is never glad about injustice, but rejoices whenever truth wins out. If you love someone, you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost. You will always believe in him, always expect the best of him, and always stand you ground in defending him”

Therefore, we could affirm that the couples of these cases were not inspired by real love or maybe what they were, but were infected with the virus of jealousy, then becoming something else, regarding to this Deborah Cooper writes in her article Jealousy and Insecurity, “Unchecked jealousy is one of the leading causes of domestic violence and murder around the world”. The jealous person has a feeling of inferiority, as Cooper says: “Conventional Literature ties jealousy to low-self esteem.” This feeling affects greatly his/her psyche leading him/her to commit the most hideous crimes. Anyone who suffers from jealousy can be a murderer; and, as jealousy is not part of love (according to the definition above), the jealous person is not in love but under the effects of passion. Here, it is important to differentiate both terms. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, “love is a strong feeling of affection toward another person and be romantically and sexually attracted to him/her”, while “passion is a very powerful feeling, for example of sexual attraction, love, hate, anger or another emotion.” Thus, passion can be related to love but also to hate and anger.
Literature is about life. Literary authors are common people who feel love, passion, hate, anger and even jealousy. In this way, their literary masterpieces consist on adaptations they make of life itself. With this, they try to teach us messages while entertaining us. In the same way, we attempt to make a contribution using the play Othello to clarify to people who constantly wonder what is wrong with their relationships, where is the origin of their failures, and thus, reduce the continuous way of passion crimes. It is people themselves who destroy the purest and strongest unions which once, were based upon love, turning them into chaotic relationships destined to the worst endings. Much of this can be seen in Othello. The tragedy of Othello is a story about jealousy, “I had rather be a toad and lived upon the vapour of a dungeon than keep a corner in the thing I love for others’ uses.”, and most of this jealousy is encouraged by Othello’s self-hatred / self-deprecation,

“Haply for I am black and have not those softs parts of conversation that chamberers have, or for I am declined into the vale of years – yet that’s not much – she’s gone. I am abused, and my relief must be to loath her."

For this, we will analyze into two chapters called “The Evil Power of The Green-Eyed Monster” and “The Whiteness of The Moor” how two of the main themes of the play – Jealousy and Self-deprecation – combine to affect Othello and Desdemona’s union. In this tragedy, the main character of the play, Othello, reflects a strong feeling of jealousy toward Desdemona. Nevertheless, different to the cases written at the beginning of the introduction, Othello’s jealousy is instilled by a third person, Iago. This evil man provoked Othello’s suspicions and gradually inserted in Othello’s mind the feeling of insecurity and lately revenge, “Look to your wife, observe her well with Cassio.” As we studied before, jealousy increases constantly until a disgrace happens. But, there is a question that comes to our minds: If Othello was pretty sure that Desdemona loved him – as it is expressed when he said, “Send for the lady to the Sagittary and let her speak of me before her father.” –, why does this Moor believe everything that Iago tells him? After reviewing the play, it could be possible to observe that one of the factors that makes Othello consider that Desdemona is deceiving him, and believe everything that Iago says, is the insecurities that he shows, his weaknesses. Such weaknesses were observed by Iago who uses them to finish Othello’s marriage. But, what are those insecurities and weaknesses that make Othello falls into the desperation and commit murder? This can be appreciated in Allison Smith’s Racism in Othello where she says “Racism is the tool used in Othello by Iago to destroy the lives of two different types of people.”

As we have observed in our study – which will be demonstrated in the development of the work – the desire of belonging to the ‘white society’ of Venice reflected by Othello, is the first clue that makes us consider that he was suffering from self-deprecation. This can be observed that:

“Othello is a hero who has led a long life full of good deeds, which was necessary for a Moor to have his existence tolerated in a predominately white culture. He has fought as a Venetian soldier and won the trust of his people."

This reflects the need Othello has for being accepted by the Venetian society as one of them.
But, we should consider that Othello is suffering from self-deprecation because of the influence of Iago, who was all the time trying to make him see his own defects. This can be appreciated when Othello makes a rare referent to his blackness in a negative way; this is because at the bottom of his heart he knows he has such differences, and then “begins to compare himself to Cassio, who is fair, eloquent, and courtly”, features only shown by white men in Renaissance Venice. For this, we conclude the introduction establishing that the play Othello is full of self-deprecation, jealousy and racism; even when Othello is dying, there is a reflection of what he was trying to get. Such status is sought by the Moor; it is reflected when he decided that Desdemona must die, “Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men”, although the moment when Othello died has certain symbolism “…Othello’s death is much more symbolic because it represents the ‘other’ failing after trying to achieve the status of the white man.” Such event tells us that, what Othello was looking for with Desdemona’s death was not only to make her pay her betrayal, but to obtain the respect and reputation of the white society as a white man who extinguished his wife’s life as the madness she had inside; all of this in order to prevent her from betraying other men.