Foolishness In Othello And The Tell-Tale Heart

Folly; lack of good sense, foolishness. This feeling of foolishness is something that many witness every day and maybe even experience themselves. Whether it being a stranger acting doltish or a close friend acting without thought, this feeling is all around. When a person is acting foolish, it can reveal their true colors, being in this case, it drove the characters in Othello and The Tell-Tale Heart to commit murder. How could someone’s lack of good sense cause them to kill someone in the first place? There are many ways to answer this question but one of the main reasons was their selfish personalities with no thought to how their actions could affect others. The theme of folly in the play Othello by Shakespeare the short story The Tell-Tale

He is a powerful figure with many respecting him, though with him being at a higher level compared to others, he is prone to the insecurities that follow. First and foremost, Othello is not originally from Venice and this causes him to feel like an outsider compared to all the other men in the Venetian Army who are all from there. His age and race all play in the part of how he thinks people see him. Since he is a moor, “A dark-skinned Muslim” and is significantly older than Desdemona, he questions his self-worth and why Desdemona would stay with a man like him. This feeling later creeps into his mind again when he starts to question if Desdemona had an affair. It was only soon enough that someone would take these insecurities and manipulate him into believing and doing things that are not right. Iago on the other hand, is known as being an antagonist. Using his tactics of manipulation, he gets everyone in the play to trust him. The audience are the only people who know Iago’s real motives which are revealed when he does not get the position he wants as a lieutenant, he says, “Forsooth, a great arithmetician, One Michael Cassio, a Florentine (A fellow almost damned in a fair wife) That never set a squadron in the field, Nor the division of a battle knows, More than a spinster—unless the bookish theoric, Wherein the toged consuls can propose. As masterly as he.”

Iago's manipulation of the rhetoric of pity is far more effective than Othello's because it recognizes that the ambivalence of pity (especially as it arises in rhetorical situations) can be exposed visually and dramatically. And Iago's manipulation of this ambivalence is a key factor in his deception of Othello. . .