Racism is prevalent in Shakespearian time and the literature that was produced during the Elizabethan era. That time was when white men dominated society and when the black man was used for slaves or other such low and demeaning jobs. For centuries, usage of the black man as badness or evil in stories has been used. For example, in The Devil and Tom Walker, the devil is portrayed as a black man that temps Tom Walker and his wife. In the play Othello, by William Shakespeare, the roles are reversed. Racism is prevalent throughout the whole play and how it is stated in backlash ways but never to the main character’s face. The main person who shows a racist attitude is Iago because of his jealously of Othello and his standing in life. Iago’s main intent throughout the story is to breakdown Othello and to destroy him.
Iago begins the story with back handed racial comments about Othello and this is when we first see how evil Iago is and how he uses racial slurs to denounce Othello’s name. When Iago calls Othello “thick-lips” he is making fun of how many African Americans have large lips and another part, where Iago uses sexual references to degrade Othello and to shame the relationship between him and Desdemona, is when he is talking to Brabantio and telling him that his daughter is with a “an old black ram” (Act 1, Scene 1, lines 66, 88-89).
Iago was talking about how Desdemona married Othello and how he was tainting a “white ewe” (Act1, Scene 1, line 89).
The Essay on Othello Iago en0
As villain in Shakespeare?s play Othello, Iago has two main actions. They are to plot and to deceive. Iago hates Othello for two reasons. He believes that Othello made love to his wife, and Iago is mad that Cassio was chosen to be Lieutenant instead of himself. From this hate comes the main conflict of the play. Iago plans to ruin Othello by carrying out a plan based on lies and deceit. This plan ...
Back in those times, color of animals was an art and it was terrible if a pure line, such as the white race or Desdemona, was tainted with another color or breed, like Othello who was a black man from Africa. This was the beginning of Iago’s plan to start turning Othello’s friends against him.
Iago needed more reasons to hate Othello even though being of an inferior race but of a higher rank in the army was not enough. He makes up the lie in his mind that Othello is sleeping with his wife and he lashes out at Othello and when he makes the statement “hell and night/ must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light” (Act1, Scene 3, line 397-398).
Iago refers to Othello as the world’s light and himself as “hell and night”. This is when the audience truly sees how evil Iago is and this is the time that Iago really starts to try and breakdown Othello and hurt everything close to him all because of jealousy. Other lines where Iago uses racism is when he is always calling Othello “the moor” behind his back. (Act 2, Scene 3, line 453).
Iago is really a coward at heart because he does not walk up to Othello’s face and tell him what he thinks of him. Instead, he denounces Othello’s name behind his back and twists words and people minds in to believing that Iago is right and that Othello is the bad man.
In Shakespeare’s time, mixed racial marriages were almost unheard of. White men married white women and black men married black women. It was very unusual to have pieces like Othello written with such blatant faux pas against the norm. I think that William Shakespeare was not a racist and that he did not mean to have his play labeled as one. Rather, I believe that he decided to explore the areas of deception, lies, and paradoxes in his plays. The deception was of having a best friend who hated you, the lies were the ones that Iago spread about Othello, and the paradox was of having a white man being evil and a black man being the good force in the play. Shakespeare used the idea of a racial play to explore the ideas and where they lead him. I believe that Shakespeare wanted to marriage to work out in the end of the play but he showed how through the belief of the times, that it didn’t last.
The Essay on Othello Iago Desdemona Play
'Othello' 'Othello' was written by one most influential writer in all of English literature, William Shakespeare during his great tragic period. Othello is set against the backdrop of the wars between Venice and Turkey that raged in the latter part of the sixteenth century. The subject of Othello is 'Love and Death', while the theme suggests 'The Incompatibility of Military Heroism & Love'. ' ...
Shakespeare is considered one of the most famous writers of his time because of the wonderful pieces of literature that he wrote. I would consider Othello to be one of the best that he wrote. I would say this one the grounds of how he thoroughly explored the grounds of racism in a white man’s society and how he demonstrated a non-racial attitude in the mist of many conflicting opinions. I believe that this is a great achievement to go against the norm and to display a very unpopular opinion. William Shakespeare did a wonderful job of exploring the different aspects of racism in his time and how it applied and now we have a great classic called Othello as a result.
