Why Is Othello An Outsider

The character Othello is written to play the part of the outsider in the play Othello, the Moor of Venice. As the title suggest the main character, Othello, was a moor living in Venice. In the 1600s, when this play was written, being a moor carried a certain stigma of being barbaric (CITE). Othello is a warrior and his barbaric characteristics help him in the battlefield. His brutality helped him go up to the rank of general in the Venetian army. Many people find his stories of war, slavery, and exotic locations extremely interesting and a lot like entertainment. Shakespeare used many different underlying themes when writing Othello but one of the biggest ones is otherness. Otherness is defined as the quality or condition of being other or

Othello’s attempts to fit into the Venetian society are noticeable since he converted to Christianity and swore his allegiance to Venice, but in the eyes of the state, he continues to be an outsider and belongs in the battlefield and not in the streets of Venice. Unlike popular belief, Othello knows how to distinguish between times of war and peace. When the war ended, his aggressive tendencies disappeared and he became a civilized man in Venice. But, his reputation causes many citizens to be wary of him. Even though Brabantio seems to like Othello at the beginning of the play, he never expected his daughter to fall in love and marry a moor. He even goes as far as accusing Othello of drugging or putting a spell on Desdemona to get her to fall in love with him

Within the first few lines of the play, the reader can tell Othello has a sort of distance from the other characters and Venetian society as a whole. Othello is often called "he" or "him" by Roderigo and Iago for some of the first scene and when they talk about Othello they use racial slurs and never address him by his name. Iago, the villain in this play, uses racism in the opening scene of the play in order to make Desdemona’s father, Brabantio, angry towards Othello. Iago shouts to Brabantio “…now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise! (CITE)” There is obvious racism in this quote. When Brabantio doesn’t believe him, Iago replies by comparing Othello to horse. He says, “You’ll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse” (CITE). There are many more instances where racism plays a role in the play for example when Iago says, “I am one, sir, that comes to tell you, your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs (CITE)” or when Roderigo that Desdemona has fallen “gross clasps of a lascivious Moor” (CITE). Roderigo also calls Othello ‘Thick lips’ and Iago uses the word ‘slave’ to refer to Othello in multiple occasions. Shakespeare also used of imagery to show the underlying racism people felt toward the ‘monster’ Othello, Iago called him “Old Black ram” and “Barbary horse. (CITE)” There are also references comparing Othello to a witch and the