Iago In Othello Essay

Abstract- This paper intends to explore the concept of Iago, performing his role as the absolute antithesis in Shakespeare’s “Othello”. The ‘I’ that is spoken of in the paper is taken as consciousness as a whole, capable of recognizing the other if not being able to reconcile with it.

"Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me Man, did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?"
(Paradise Lost, X, 743-45, John Milton)
These are the words of Adam, denied the knowledge of his own destiny. These are the words of man who feels the most helpless because he is susceptible unlike his creator. The basic Calvinistic question arises on this note, as to what kind of influence God has on the free will of his own creation

However on a close examination of the above mentioned texts, one would be able to delineate a powerful role of the Noumenon. In the earlier times, that would be characterized as Destiny or Fate which was given beforehand and out of Man’s immediate knowledge hence control. Satan notices this before God and thus he is removed from his grace, he notices that man must forever submit to arbitrary damnation when there is the possibility of the “Noumenon”[1] because he is only capable of perception. The character of Iago in Othello exemplifies that, by using this to damn Othello. He understands that the code is arbitrary, and the awareness of the fact that it is arbitrary makes him conscious that the suffering of man is also absurdly arbitrary.

1) Noumenon- Immanuel Kant introduces the concept of that which we do not know but exists as opposed to that which we know to exist called the “phenomena”. This concept appears in The Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1781.

“I follow him to serve my turn upon him.
We cannot all be masters, nor all masters
Cannot be truly followed. You shall mark
Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave
That (doting on his own obsequious bondage)
Wears out his time much like his master’s ass
For naught but provender, and when he’s old,

He understands his lack of control and how susceptibility to humanness could be controlled by a rationale equaling the rationale of God, the divine true code. The knowledge of the Divine true Code without the love and morality holding man back from excess would allow him to be master of the causality chain. Iago is perfectly capable of understanding the workings of other minds but at no point does he show compassion for any. He is evil for its own sake which makes him the true antithesis. He regards the very human as erroneous and “foolish” as he constantly addresses his wife. It is his wife who finally discloses all, proving to be his only tragic flaw, his ‘trust’ which too is outside of himself and which he kills towards the close of the play. He also double crosses and murders Roderigo who had essentially offered him blind trust. The play opens with the assertion of Roderigo’s trust when he describes Iago