Othello and the Theme of Revenge

Othello and the Theme of Revenge

“Killing myself, to die upon a kiss”. These are Othello’s last words,

as he commits suicide and dies next to his wife. After ironically

killing her himself at the end of Act 5. Othello was led to do this by

the manipulative Iago. He was just another victim of his revengeful

scheme. The play was written in 1608 a time when the Ottoman Empire

was at war with the Venetians. Othello is a tragedy because of the

deception and betrayal of Iago which causes many people to die. During

the times of Shakespeare, racism was a well known. I believe

Shakespeare wanted to explore this as one of his main themes in the

play, he did this mostly through Iago’s character, he racially abuses

Othello “I hate the Moor”. The play explores many different themes

each trying to convey a specific message. The main themes of the play

are betrayal, revenge, love, trust, honesty, racism and social

hierarchy. These are only some of the themes explored in the play.

Act 1 scene 1 begins with Iago and Rodrigo speaking about Othello’s

secret marriage to Desdemona. “S’blood, but you will not hear me. If

ever I did dream of such a matter Abhor me.” Iago is explaining to

Rodrigo that he did not know about Othello was going to marry

Desdemona. In this early stage in the play, as the audience we would

believe Iago and see nothing wrong with what he is trying to do. We

also find out that Rodrigo is in love with Desdemona and that Iago is

taking money from him to help Rodrigo. In this scene we also find out

clues as why Iago hates Othello. Iago tells us that he is angry with

Othello for making Cassio his lieutenant instead of him.

We a...

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...hey are left uncertain

whether someone might be killed or not. Rodrigo is again under the

influence of Iago’s deception, and has made Rodrigo do his dirty work

for him. However this scene would not be as effective if Iago had not

provoked the pair of them. During their fight Iago slyly wounds Cassio

in the leg and kills Rodrigo then pretends to help him, this also

creates tension in the audience because they are left almost on the

edge of there seats wondering what will he do next?

Overall I think that the Shakespeare’s play was very successful, in

using Iago’s character to express the main themes and morals of the

play. His manipulative, two faced character has made him and his

revengeful scheme work, Shakespeare might of wanted to show that there

were a lot of people like Iago himself around during his time.