Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
Love
Manliness
Appearance versus Reality
Jealousy
Prejudice
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
Love
- Types of love and what that means are different between different characters.
- Othello and Desdemona – married love
- Iago false professions of love in friendship for Roderigo and Cassio – opportunism and betrayal
- Desdemona's and Cassio – friendship (which is misinterpreted by the jealous Othello as adultery)
- Emilia and Desdemona – true friendship and loyalty
Manliness
- Othello is first and foremost a soldier.
- He woos Desdemona with tales of his military travels and battles.
- Once the Turks are drowned, Othello is left without anything to do, and therefore has no means of proving his manhood or honour in public. He proves to be not so manly in his private life with his personal insecurities.
- Iago capitalises on this uneasiness, so much that Othello begins to confuse his public role with his private responsibilities.
- Othello’s final restores his identity as a soldier who wishes to be remembered for his public service.
Appearance versus Reality
- For Othello, seeing is believing, and proof of the truth is visual (‘ocular proof’)
- Brabantio is quick to judge Othello, after he elopes with Desdemona, because of the colour of his skin
- Iago manipulates Othello by showing him a false picture of the relationship between Cassio and Desdemona (to feed his jealousy)
- Iago pretends to be a loyal friend to both Othello and Roderigo when all the time he is working against them in secret
- Iago’s manipulative nature is witnessed through his soliloquies (leading to dramatic irony)
Jealousy
- Jealousy is Othello’s tragic flaw (hamartia) that destroys both him and those around him in the end. His pride and vanity are also to blame.
- Emilia believes jealousy is part of the personality of men
- Iago has noticed Othello's tendency to insecurity and overreaction, but perhaps not even Iago imagined Othello would go as far into jealousy as he does.
- Jealousy forces Othello's mind to become so obsessed by the thought of Desemona’s adultery with Cassio that no other assurance or explanation can penetrate.
- Up to the moment he kills Desdemona, Othello's growing jealousy maddens him beyond reason.
- Upon seeing that she was innocent and that he killed her unjustly, Othello recovers, seeing the madness of his terrible deed. At the end, he speaks with calm rationality, judging and condemning himself before finally taking his own life.
Prejudice
- There is an underlying atmosphere of racial prejudice in Venetian society, exemplified by Iago’s hatred of “the Moor”.
- Desdemona shows that she is above this through her relationship with Othello and her loyalty to him
- This prejudice affects Othello’s personality so much that he is unable to discuss his concerns and fears directly with Desdemona, and so he acts on panicked assumption.
- While the Venetians in the play are generally fearful of the prospect of Othello’s social entrance into white society through his marriage to Desdemona, all Venetians respect and honour him as a soldier. Mercenary Moors were, in fact, commonplace at the time.