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Desdemona Is To Blame In William Shakespeare's Othello

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Othello (The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice) is a play written by William Shakespeare. The story Un Capitano Moro ("A Moorish Captain") by Cinthio, first published in 1565, inspires Shakespeare to write the play. Since the author never published any of his plays, it is controversially discussed when Othello was first published. However, it is believed that the play was first played between 1604 and 1605 and, first printed in 1622. The central characters in the play are Othello – a highly esteemed general in the service of Venice, and Desdemona – a beautiful young lady who enrages her father, the Venetian senator, because she elopes with a man several years older than her, who is Othello. The doomed relationship between Othello and…show more content…
After reading the letter from Venice, he begins to speak in less cohesive manner: “Pish! Noses, ears, and lips. Isn’t Possible? Confess! Handkerchief! O devil!”(4.1.42) His sentences lose their former completeness and he starts talking with more word association, as are the words “Handkerchief!”, and “devil!”. Othello’s new manner of expressing his thought is mainly a reflexion of his constant thinking of Desdemona, the handkerchief, as well as the sense of pure evil. These lines of his sounds really hard but at least they show the reader what really is on Othello’s mind. No clear and complete sentences are displayed but more like a torrent of true feelings. Thus, “Alabaster” can be assumed as his true attitude towards her. Along with the doomed relationship between the main characters, another main theme in the play is the unsuspected weakness and deficiency in Othello’s character due to his racial character. This is because of the fact that he is a Moor. He is presented as half-civilized and not well adapted for life in cultured Venice. Many critics believe that the skin color of Othello has nothing to do with what is happening in the play. They explain that he is just a man, though he also happens to be black and his skin color can be ignored in the…show more content…
He thinks of himself as no one, someone on the periphery of social and political power. Furthermore, he also believes that being black will impact his interactions with people, especially his relationship with Desdemona. The critics who believe that Othello’s skin color is important for the character and for the interpretation of the play also suggest that this is in fact the reason why he experiences lack of confidence. Racism is a powerful issue as Shakespeare presents the color and ethnicities as social constructs that can be made to havoc with one’s own sense of self. The author shaped his character in that way in order to assert that race and implications of being an individual in the position of power push Othello’s into his own self-destruction nature rooted in doubt and fear. This self-destruction nature of the main character hampers his relationship with Desdemona. As mentioned above, he thinks of her as “Alabaster”. Alabaster is interpreted as a rock, which cannot give back the same amount of feelings that Othello invests in it. He refers to her as “Promethean heat” (5.2.12). In religio-mythology, Promethean heat, or also called fire, is the mythological substance of life. According to the story of Hesiod, it was a life-animating type of fire that was stolen from Zeus by the Titan named Prometheus. He stole it in
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