Question- "Shakespeare never loses his faith in goodness while he is sounding the depths of evil in his great tragedies." Discuss.

Answer -

Good Or Evil: A Critical Analysis of Othello's Main Characters William Shakespeare's Othello is a classic depiction of a struggle between good and evil. In the play, the characters are faced with the choice to either conquer or succumb to the overpowering force of evil. Shakespeare places his characters on a sort of spectrum in which a character's amount of god or evil can be represented by a shade of color: black representing pure evil, white representing absolute goodness, and a shade of grey exemplifying the nature of all characters that fall in between the two extremes of the spectrum.

In the play Othello, the main characters are a prefect example of this technique of characterization. Through plot development, interactions with other characters, and other different methods of characterization, the two main characters Othello and Iago, reveal their true colors throughout the development of the play. Othello, the main character in the play, when analyzed can be considered a grey character; he has the tendency to succumb to the darkness of evil, or overcome the force of evil and arise as a champion of the good.

Prior to the start of the novel, Othello had secretly married Desdemona, daughter of Brabantio who is a Venetian senator. When the topic of Desdemona's marriage to Othello is brought up to Brabantio, he decides to accuse Othello of wooing her by witchcraft in front of the senate and the duke in order to break up the marriage and have his daughter returned. This plan backfires, however, as Othello explains to the senate and the duke that he wooed Desdemona with his stories of how he gained his freedom, the magnificent battles he won, and the strange and interesting things he had seen on his journeys around the world.

He states to the senate: These things to hear / Would Desdemona seriously incline. / But still the house affairs would draw her hence, / Which ever as she could with haste dispatch, / She'd come again, and with a greedy ear/Devour up my discourse/... She loved me for the dangers I had passed,/And I loved her that she did pity them (Shakespeare 1. 3. 40). Othello is able to win over the senate and the duke with his glorious stories. The duke even remarks, "I think this would win my daughter too".

At this point in the play, it is apparent that Othello is almost a purely white character; his only flaw being he had, ".... ta'en away this old man's daughter, /It is most true. True I have married her. /The very head and front of my offending/Hath this extent, no more"(1.3.35). This burst of goodness is short lived in the character of Othello, however. With the progression of the play, Othello begins to become darker and darker of a character, as he becomes enshrouded with lies that corrupt him and send him spiraling downward until he is surrounded by a dark evil.

Norman Sanders, a literary critic of Shakespeare's Othello discusses how the use of language defines the main characters of the play. In his criticism Othello, Sanders writes, "Othello's natural speech is poetic, stately, romantic, heroic, and so on... during the course of the action, Iago manages to infect' Othello with some sordid thoughts and speech, in effect bringing the noble Moor partway down to his own level" (Nardo 52). In Othello's life, Iago represents the evil that he is burdened with overcoming. Unfortunately for Othello, he is unable to prevent himself from being restrained by Iago and his evil ways.

Iago, a soldier in Othello's army who wanted to marry Desdemona, decides to manipulate Othello into thinking his wife was cheating on him with Michael Cassio, Othello's lieutenant. This shroud of lies blinds Othello to the truth and sends him into fits of uncontrollable rage, and even epileptic fits. Iago's built up lie of Desdemona's infidelity brings Othello to a point in which he becomes a completely dark character consumed with evil; he reaches out with vengeance in his eyes towards his wife, and smothers her.

It is this very moment, the murder of Desdemona, that crosses Othello over from the light to the dark. Wyndham Lewis states in his criticism of Othello that, "For Othello there is nothing equivocal, I think; and the black fugre of this child-man is one of the poles of Shakespeare's sensation". Here, Lewis is explaining how Othello believes only oneside of the story that he hears. He has become a black figure; and evil man on the extreme end of one side of shakespeare's spectrum.

Othello ultimately loses the battle to evil because of his blindness caused by deceit and jealousy. In the end, Othello ends his sufferings by taking his own life; turning himself over as a victim of the darkness that clouded his life. The dramatic shift from good to evil in Othello is what characterizes him as being a grey character. From very early in the play, it is apparent that the character Iago represents pure evil in Othello. The first few lines spoken by Iago are those that express an absolute hate and disgust of a specific individual, who we later find out is Othello. It is this hatred for Othello that drives the entire action of the play, as it is based upon Iago's diabolical scheming and malevolent manipulation of Othello. Iago, a master of manipulation, convinces Othello that Desdemona is having an affair. The shroud of lies Iago is able to create around Othello is too thick for him to see through and Othello is eventually convinced of the infidelity of his wife which leads to him taking her life, and shortly afterward, his own. Iago clearly has an extreme hatred for Othello, but the motivation for this hatred is unclear.

In the beginning of the novel, he states that he hates Othello for. choosing Michael Cassius over him for the rank of lieutenant. Later in Act One, he states that he suspects Othello for sleeping with his wife, Emilia: " I hate the moor. / It is thought abroad that 'twixt my sheets/He's done my office. Later again, this time in Scene Two, Iago's motives change again. Iago claims that he had developed a lust for Desdemona and wishes to sleep with her in order to get even with Othello for sleeping with Emilia.

Whatever the motive, Iago takes to his diabolical practices with much delight, regardless of who he is corrupting. Clearly, Iago is a devious character who represents the blackest of blacks and the darkest of darks on the color spectrum. He is the purest form of evil that affects more than just Othello in this play. At the end of Act Two, Iago gets Cassio drunk and makes him insinuate a fight with Roderigo. In an attempt to prevent the fight Governor Montano gets stabbed by Cassio. Towards the end of the play, Roderigo is wounded in a fight with Cassio that was started by Iago, and is later killed in the same fight.

Fleeing from the fight, Iago spontaneously wounds Cassio and quickly flees the scene. The climax of the play occurs when Othello kills Desdemona out of jealousy and rage; a jealousy and rage that was initiated by the deception and lies of Iago. After Othello kills his wife, Emilia enters the scene and discloses to Othello that Desdemona had been faithful to him and reveals the truth to Othello. Iago, having been discovered as a liar and a deceiver kills his wife and once again flees. Finally, Othello end up killing himself. All of this death and destruction in the play was caused by one man, Iago.

Clearly, he represents absolute darkness in Othello and is the epitome of evil. Included within Shakespeare's play Othello are characters who represent pure goodness as well as absolute evil, and everything in between. Characters like Othello start out as naturally good characters, but when confronted with the task of facing and overcoming evil they may fail and fall to the dark side, just as Othello did. Absolute evil in this play is manifested through the character Iago. Iago uses his maniacal abilities to manipulate Othello and shroud him in a cloud of lies.

This ultimately leads to the death and downfall of many characters, including Othello. The development of the play help to characterize Othello and Iago as black, white, or grey characters in the play Othello.

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