Othello – William Shakespeare

Thematic analysis, language, and imagery

THEME ANALYSIS
The Theme of Love - Othello loves Desdemona as an extension of himself. His marriage is
sustained by an idealized vision of Desdemona serving as the object of his exalted romantic
passion. When he murders Desdemona, Othello destroys himself. The act is a prelude to his
actual suicide. Iago’s mode of temptation, then, is to persuade Othello to regard himself
with the eyes of Venice. He is led to accept the view that he is alien to the Venetian culture,
and that any woman who loves him does so perversely.

In Othello’s tainted state of mind, Desdemona’s sexuality becomes an unbearable threat to

him. Her warmth and devotion become ‘proof’ of disloyalty. Othello’s most tortured speech
reveal that he equates the seemingly betraying woman he has loved with his own mother.
She gave Othello’s father a handkerchief and threatened him with loss of her love if he
should lose it. Othello has briefly learned and then forgotten the precious art of harmonizing
erotic passion and spiritual love. As these two great aims of love are driven apart in him, he
comes to loathe and fear the secularity that puts him so much in mind of his physical frailty
and dependence on woman. The horror and pity of Othello rests above all in the spectacle
of a love that was once so whole and noble made filthy by self-hatred.

As a romantic lover, Othello has been in quest of ideal beauty and ideal love. These he finds
embodied in the figure of Desdemona. Desdemona is not only a symbol of love but the
cause of love in others. In her presence, Othello realizes the supreme experience of love.
The symbol of love is destroyed by Othello, the lover. However, the experience of love
continues. That is why Othello, even after killing Desdemona, is in a position to be in full
‘possession of this heavenly sight’ of his dead beloved.

The Theme of Jealousy - Othello is a study in sexual jealousy. The audience has to look into
Iago himself for the origin of this jealousy. As the embodiment and genius of sexual
jealousy, Iago suffers with ironic appropriateness from the evil he preaches and without
external cause. Emilia understands that such jealousy is not a natural affliction but a self-
induced disease of the mind. She tells Desdemona, ‘Jealous persons are not ever jealous for
the cause, but jealous for they are jealous. It is a monster begot upon itself, born on itself’.
Iago’s own testimonial bears this out, for his jealousy is at one wholly irrational and
agonizingly self destructive: ‘I do suspect the lusty Moor/ Hath leaped into my seat, the
thought whereof/ Doth like a poisonous mineral, gnaw my inwards.’

In the night of this nightmare, the audience can see that even Iago’s seemingly plausible
resentment of Cassio’s promotion is jealousy. The ‘daily beauty’ in Cassio’s life makes Iago
feel ugly by comparison. It engenders in Iago a profound sense of lack of worth, from which
he can temporarily find relief only by reducing Othello and others to his own miserable
condition. He is adept at provoking self-hatred and jealousy in others because he suffers
from them himself.
The Theme of Appearance vs. Reality - Iago embodies this thread or aspect when he tells
Roderigo that he will wear his heart upon his sleeve. Othello asserts that, ‘Men should be
what they seem’. But throughout, Othello’s own appearance raises some doubt about the
validity of this assumption. His soul is not openly reflected in his face. Similarly Iago’s evil is
not reflected in the honesty of his face (‘I am not what I am’).

So conscious is Othello of the gulf between appearance and reality that he laments the
passage of old customs and their replacement with others that cannot guarantee certainty.
As he takes Desdemona’s hand, he observes ‘the heart of old gave hand, but our new
heraldry is hands nor hearts’. This leads finally to his own analysis of the contradictions that
he believes she embodies: ‘O thou black weed why art thou so lovely fair?’ In reality,
Desdemona does not embody these contradictions. For her, his blackness is of no
significance at all. She sees ‘his visage in his mind’ and holds this view consistently
throughout the play.

The Theme of Deception and Self-deception - Characters in Othello are divided into two
categories. On the one hand, there are characters who are victims of deceit. On the other
hand, there are characters who deceive themselves. Iago is an arch deceiver, and all the
other characters in this play are his dupes. He deceives them and uses them to achieve his
own ends. Roderigo, Othello, Cassio, and Desdemona are key victims of his deception.
Roderigo is constantly deceived by Iago, to the point that he turns over his wealth into the
villain’s hands. Cassio is another victim of the deception practiced by Iago. Since Iago has a
grudge against him, he decides to work against him and bring about his ruin, which he
accomplishes through deception.

Of all the characters in the play, Othello himself is the most deceived by Iago. Because Iago
wants revenge on the General for ignoring him for a promotion, he sets out to destroy
Othello. He manipulates him into believing that his fair and innocent wife is having an affair
with Cassio. When Desdemona pleads for Cassio, at Iago’s suggestion, the Moor’s jealousy is
further ignited. Then Iago deceives Othello by offering the planted handkerchief as a proof
of Desdemona’s infidelity. Othello’s deceit is so thorough that he easily succumbs to Iago’s
suggestion that Desdemona must be killed for her evil ways. As a result, Iago equally
deceives Desdemona.

Othello is also a study in self-deception. Iago, Roderigo, Othello, and Brabantio are victims of
self-deception. Brabantio is a character who is entirely self-deceived. He is of the view that
his daughter, Desdemona, will follow his command and forsake her new husband. Though
Iago is an arch-deceiver in the play, he is also self-deceived because he fails to understand
the true nature of his wife Emilia. He does not realize that Emilia would be the means of
exposing him. Roderigo, too, is self-deceived in as much as he thinks that he can gain the
love of Desdemona and possess her, even after her marriage to the Moor. Othello, however,
is the most self-deceived of all, for he does not accept the innocence and purity of his lovely
young wife. He believes that Desdemona has been unfaithful because he is black,
mysterious, and older. In truth, none of these things matter to Desdemona. She loves
Othello deeply and purely for who he is.
LANGUAGE
In Othello, Shakespeare uses language as a vehicle for deliberate dramatic effect. Most
striking is the carefully fashioned and quite distinct idiomatic language he has invented for
use by Iago and Othello. Iago often speaks in prose, using euphemisms for a conscious
calculation of effective cunning (e.g.: ‘Our bodies are our gardens, to which our ills are
gardeners. So that if the audience will plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up
thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many, either to have it sterile
with idleness or mannered with industry, why the power and authority of this lies in our
wills’). The parallelism and antithesis, the symmetrically balanced sentences and phrases are
an exact measure of the cool self awareness that typifies all that Iago says and does. A
similar self-consciousness is observable in Iago’s blank verse speeches. Whenever he resorts
to simile or metaphor, there is always a strict control of the image, a closed quality,
whereby a static mental picture is evoked rather than any dynamic imaginative propulsion
into some wider topic. For example, ‘The thought whereof / Doth like a poisonous mineral
gnaw my inwards.’

Othello’s idioms stem from egocentricity. Everything is judged and viewed from his eyes. He
describes his love for Desdemona in selfish terms: ‘She loved me for the dangers I had
passed, And I loved her that she did pity them’. He also colours his fair and beautiful wife
with military terms, calling her his ‘fair warrior,’ and his ‘captain’s captain’. More significant
and fatal than verbal militarizing of his wife is that he makes her the sole object of his full
powers of romantic projection. She is not only his love but Love itself which banished chaos
from the universe at the beginning of the world. In the end, he believes that Desdemona has
demeaned love and caused chaos. He then considers Desdemona a ‘fair devil,’ and a ‘black
vengeance.’

IMAGERY
The main imagery in Othello revolves around animals in action, preying on one another.
More than half of these images are given by Iago. He refers to a plague of flies, a
quarrelsome dog, the snaring of birds, asses led by the nose, wild cats, wolves, goats, and
monkeys. Othello refers to foul toads, summer flies, the raven, aspic’s tongues, crocodile
tears, goats, and monkeys. The animals referred to are often loathsome insect, reptiles, or
trapped animals.

Some examples of questions

1. Explain the various facets of Iago’s character. What is his contribution to the tragedy in
the lives of Othello, Desdemona, Cassio, and Roderigo?
2. How do you account for the tragic failure of the romantic love marriage of Othello and
Desdemona?
3. Examine the role of racial discrimination in the tragedy of Othello and Desdemona.
4. Discuss Othello as a tragedy of intrigue.
5. Explain how the theme of jealousy is developed in Othello.
6. Discuss Othello as a play of deception and self-deception.