THE LOVE Story IN Othello PDF

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Assignment of Critical Thinking from Golden West College...

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Surname 1 Name of student Tutor’s name Course Date THE LOVE STORY IN OTHELLO Othello by William Shakespeare is nothing but a tragic story. Shakespeare uses this story to tell his readers that love yields and attracts negativity (Archer, Culpeper & Rayson, p. 5). This can be seen from the relationship between Desdemona and her father, Lago and Cassio as well as Othello and Desdemona. Love is a potential prey of evil and more often than not, when love falls prey to evil, the repercussions are always non-desirable. Shakespeare in this story of Othello uses diction and metaphor to demonstrate to his readers the dark and dangerous side of love which most people turn a blind eye to in hope for the popularized benefits. In fact, Shakespeare through this story, depicts marriage and love to be a curse; one which is imposed through the disguised ‘witchcraft’ of love (Bevington, p. 229). This paper purposes to discuss love in Othello as source and catalyst of evil as provided by William Shakespeare. The love story of Othello in the William’s text is immediately founded on negativity. The story is predominantly based on the fact that Lago, who was Othello’s pennant, is jealous and unhappy of the fact that Othello chose to promote Cassio to be his lieutenant instead of him. Lago decides to avenge this self-imposed offense and the only love in the story becomes the weapon for avenge. With this plot, William was actually providing an alternative perspective, an ignored perspective, of what love is in the society. Love continues to be used as a weapon even in the modern society (Archer, Culpeper & Rayson, p. 7). For this reason, the love story of Othello confirms that love is dangerous, as much as it may also be a source of goodness.

Surname 2 Lago plots his revenge by deceiving Othello that Cassio, whom he had just promoted, slept with his wife Desdemona. Jealousy is again brought into the picture at this point. Othello becomes filled with jealousy and ends up killing Desdemona who not long ago, he claimed to live wholeheartedly. Jealousy must be a cousin of love; wherever love is, jealousy seems to also be looming around. William uses this dictum of jealousy to tell his readers that love is never pure (Maggini, Lundgren & Leuci, p. 139). Rather, love is surrounded by the dangerous negative emotions such as jealousy which form the predominant plot of the story. William, through the story, is communicating the thinking that love has dark and dangerous facets which people ought to be aware of. William Shakespeare, through the story, also shows his audience that the development or the birth of love is not always pure as initially perceived. The play begins with the two love birds, Othello and Desdemona eloping. They do so because the bride’s father does not approve of the marriage. This thus causes the readers to wonder, if love was pure and a good thing, why would Desdemona’s father oppose it? It leads to one single conclusion that the birth of love perhaps also creates pain which is a source of negativity on another level. Desdemona’s father claims that her daughter had been stolen from her (William, 2017). He claims that Desdemona has been abused and corrupted by spells. The use of the word spell by Shakespeare is very intentional in the text. The subtle message in the use of this word is that love has a sorcerous power. William thus uses his character, Desdemona’s father to tell the readers that the negative connotations of love can be associated with witchcraft and black magic. Normally, lovers take enjoyment in the description of being under each other’s spell. However, as readers can point out from this love story, this spell is a great source of negativity both to the people in love and to those around them. Readers can easily assert from the story that under the influence of a love

Surname 3 spell, lovers lose control over their own behavior. This can easily turn sour and is the sole reason that Othello ends up killing Desdemona. William Shakespeare also uses the Othello love story to show his readers that love exposes the lovers to corruption because of its characteristics – jealousy and the relegation of control of personal behavior. Othello descends to corruption he loves Desdemona. If love were fully positive, Shakespeare subtly tells his readers, Othello would not be this kind of corruption that made him unwise to distrust Desdemona. Lago who is acting out of jealousy and the motivation revenge, – all being negative traits – fools Othello into believing that Venetian women are infamously unfaithful (William, p. 34). A few moments after Lago has left, Othello laments that marriage has a curse. Shakespeare does this to further on the association between love and the ominous witchcraft. This story of Othello and Desdemona also reveals something else that is alarming about love. When Othello laments about marriage having a curse, he also voices the desire of love of possess the lover entirely, both body and mind (Bevington, p. 235). Ownership being a goal of love is in itself negativity because absolute ownership cannot be achieved; not to mention that such kind of possession is also evil and restrictive. It is a quest for power (Barthes, p. 121)Also since absolute ownership is impossible, William opens love to the idea of trust. Lovers without trust are easily tortured and destroyed by suspicion (Barthes, p. 153). One could therefore easily conclude that Othello never really loved Desdemona, because if he did, then he would have trusted her beyond the allegations brought to him by Lago. It would also be correct to state that love was never present in the story, just the desire to own each other, both mind and body and the impossibility of this yields destruction (Rai, p. 54).

Surname 4 Othello in story is quoted saying to Desdemona that he could not endure pain in his heart. Othello says that his heart is the fountain from which his current runs or dries up. William was using two layers of metaphor in this section – the fountain meant the heart while the heart referred to love. Shakespeare associates the heart with love, as many people do, because the heart is a vital organ. However, this also explains the fact that if love does not flow, then the heart stops. Through this, the readers can be able to assess the dangerousness of love when it comes to death and life. When love comes to an end, people feel as if the source of their happiness has been diminished (Strachey, p. 61) Like in the literal sense, if the heart was to stop blood like a fountain, then Othello would dry up and die. The perception of lack of love from Desdemona to Othello causes his love for her to dry up as well as his desire to live. Shakespeare, through this, is telling his readers that love is a cause of suffering especially when it is perceived to be wounded or dried up (William, p. 49). Shakespeare is able to contrast the goodness and the evil of love with his intent mainly being the latter. The love between Othello and Desdemona starts with euphoria intoxication. At one point, Othello says to Desdemona that the love they shared was too much of joy. Love usually has very deep psychological associations (Lorenz, p. 215). Shakespeare uses this story to remind readers that there are hazardous snares that are set up by love for us; that love has a darker side which is powerful and almost magical. Shakespeare uses this story to show that love can fill people with jealousy and a kind of fury that can even rob people their lives. The kind of jealousy that is born from love does not facilitate cooperation between lovers; on the contrary, it brings in dissatisfaction and the lack of trust (Bevington, p. 241). Lack of satisfaction subsequently robs lovers the peace of mind. Lack of peace of mind yields anger, fear, sadness,

Surname 5 disgust and even hatred. From the story, jealousy causes trust to be destroyed and further jealousy to be born. Jealousy is a cousin of love and it caused the destruction of Othello’s world. Lago is presented by Shakespeare in the story as evil minded and therefore in essence as evil itself. Shakespeare uses Lago as such as a representation to show how love attracts evil. Love may be the exact opposite of evil but the two, according to the structuring of this story, are complimentary; just like light and darkness, love cannot exist without hate. Also what Shakespeare seems to be subtly noting in this story is that love can turn into evil very fast. The characteristics of evil are jealousy, envy and revenge as presented in the story. These same characteristics are key in the formula that turns love into evil. By killing Desdemona, Othello confirms that the love in the story had already turned into evil. Shakespeare uses the death of Desdemona who was innocent, to show how the innocence of love can be overcome by evil easily. Perhaps Shakespeare was also trying to communicate the message that evil is stronger than love. Nevertheless, this can be contested against. The fact that in this story, jealousy always looms around love could also be Shakespeare’s way of saying that there is a love jealousy and evil jealousy. Many people can agree that sometimes jealousy is the confirmation of love. However, lack of love brings difficulty (Millay, p. 11). In conclusion, love began with Roderigo who became jealous when he realized that Othello and Desdemona had gotten married secretly. Also as can be seen from this, Love’s dark side is jealousy which then gives birth to all the negative values which have been mentioned above. William Shakespeare thus uses the love story of Othello to remind lovers that love is not exempted from the negative forces and that in fact; love can be the cause of their existence (Bevington, p. 251). Love is like a drug; it may either give life or take away life. In this case,

Surname 6 William shows how love leads to destruction. One may argue that love always brings about positivity but this story is proof of the contrary. Works Cited Archer, Dawn, Jonathan Culpeper, and Paul Rayson. "Love-a familiar or a devil? An exploration of key domains in Shakespeare's Comedies and Tragedies." AHRC ICT Methods Network Expert Seminar on Linguistics. 2005. Barthes, Roland. A lover's discourse: Fragments. Macmillan, 1978. Bevington, David. "Othello: Portrait of a marriage." Othello: New Critical Essays (2013): 221310. Lorenz, Konrad. On aggression. Routledge, 2005. Maggini, Carlo, Eva Lundgren, and Emanuela Leuci. "Jealous love and morbid jealousy." Acta Bio Medica Atenei Parmensis77.3 (2006): 137-146. Millay, Edna St Vincent. Collected sonnets. Washington Square Press, 1959. Rai, Ram Prasad. "Jealousy and Destruction in William Shakespear's Othello." Crossing the Border: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 4.1 (2015): 53-58. William, Shakespeare. Othello. Strelbytskyy Multimedia, 2017. Strachey, James. "Civilization and its Discontents." The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (1953-74) 21 (1961): 70....