Othello: the General and His Fall Essays -- Othello essays

Othello: the General and His Fall  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚   The noble Othello in the Shakespearean play of that name has no one to blame but himself; his suicide results. Is his downfall resulting from his naivete and gullibility? Let us study and expose this famous character in this essay.    Francis Ferguson in â€Å"Two Worldviews Echo Each Other† describes how Othello carries out Iago’s plan of destruction:    Othello moves to kill Desdemona (Act V, scene 2) with that â€Å"icy current and compulsive course† which he had felt at the end of Act III, scene 3. We hear once more the music and the cold, magnificent images that express his â€Å"perfect soul†:    Yet I’ll not shed her blood, Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, And smooth as monumental alabaster.    He tells himself that he is sacrificing Desdemona to â€Å"justice†; but we see how clumsily (like a great baby) he fumbles to get Desdemona smothered at the second try; how he roars and blubbers when it’s over. When Emilia yells at him, â€Å"O gull! O dolt!† she only puts a name to what we have seen, even while the great Othello music was in our ears. (137)    The most radical change during the course of the drama is undergone by the protagonist, the Moor. Robert Di Yanni in â€Å"Character Revealed Through Dialogue† states that the deteriorated transformation which Othello undergoes is noticeable in his speech:    Othello’s language, like Iago’s, reveals his character and his decline from a courageous and confident leader to a jealous lover distracted to madness by Iago’s insinuations about his wife’s infidelity. The elegance and control, even the exaltation of his early speeches, give way to the crude degradation of his later remarks. (123)    .. ...t Plays: Sophocles to Brecht. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1965.    Coles, Blanche. Shakespeare’s Four Giants. Rindge, New Hampshire: Richard Smith Publisher, 1957.    Di Yanni, Robert. â€Å"Character Revealed Through Dialogue.† Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint from Literature. N. p.: Random House, 1986.    Ferguson, Francis. â€Å"Two Worldviews Echo Each Other.† Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint from Shakespeare: The Pattern in His Carpet. N.p.: n.p., 1970.    Jorgensen, Paul A. William Shakespeare: The Tragedies. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985.    Shakespeare, William. Othello. In The Electric Shakespeare. Princeton University. 1996. http://www.eiu.edu/~multilit/studyabroad/othello/othello_all.html No line nos.