Act 5, Scene 2

Question 1

A5, S2: Othello: “Yet I’ll not shed her blood, / Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, / And smooth as monumental alabaster”

Answer 1

• Othello still thinks Desdemona is beautiful and doesn’t want to harm her, or perhaps doesn’t want to harm her in a way that is outwardly obvious in order to assuage his guilt
• Alabaster is a stone used to figures on tombs, and snow has connotations of coldness as well as winter imagery implying death

Question 2

A5, S2: Othello: “Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men”

Answer 2

Believes he has a moral duty, showing he does not kill her for vengeance, and it almost seems as though he is playing some sort of God. Feminist idea that women are femme fatales and female sexuality is a danger

Question 3

A5, S2: Othello: “Put out the light, and then put out the light”

Answer 3

The candle is a symbol of her life, and he puts out both prematurely. He also doesn’t want to see her, and doesn’t feel anyone should, linking into the theme of light and dark

Question 4

A5, S2: Othello: “If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, / I can again thy former light restore, / Should I repent me”

Answer 4

Religious, Christian images - contrast with his immorality. Idea that if he kills her she will return to her old “light”. He uses lots of images to refer to Desdemona in order to distance himself from her as a person

Question 5

A5, S2: Othello: “I know not where is that Promethean heat”

Answer 5

Link to Prometheus’s sacrifice in mythology, but also implies there is no way for him to ‘relight’ Desdemona (despite the idea of ‘restoring her former light’), showing that he does realise how monumental and irreversible what he is doing is

Question 6

A5, S2: Othello: “When I have pluck’d the rose”

Answer 6

Image of chastity and love, suggesting that underneath he knows she is pure and there is a part of his subconscious that has not fully internalised Iago’s message, as this image undermines his position and shows his conflict

Question 7

A5, S2: Othello: “I must weep. / But they are cruel tears”

Answer 7

Doesn’t want to cry, implying that he is committing to actions that he doesn’t want to

Question 8

A5, S2: Othello: “This sorrow’s heavenly”

Answer 8

Oxymoron shows his conflict

Question 9

A5, S2: Othello: “Have you prayed tonight, Desdemon?”

Answer 9

Wants her to be able to reconcile any sins so she doesn’t go to hell - evidence of some residual empathy towards her?

Question 10

A5, S2: Desdemona: “Alas, why gnaw you so your nether lip? / Some bloody passion shakes your very frame”

Answer 10

Shows his unusual body language which tips her off

Question 11

A5, S2: Othello: “Thou dost stone my heart, / And mak’st me call what I intend to do / A murder which I thought a sacrifice”

Answer 11

Unhappy with the fact she will not confess, as it does not allow him to kill her guiltlessly as he had hoped

Question 12

A5, S2: Desdemona: “Send for him hither. / Let him confess a truth”

Answer 12

Desdemona poses rational resistance to Othello

Question 13

A5, S2: Desdemona: “While I say but one prayer”

Answer 13

Shows the importance of religion to her - foregrounds her moral goodness

Question 14

A5, S2: Desdemona: “Nobody. I myself. Farewell. / Commend me to my kind lord. O farewell.”

Answer 14

Desdemona does not blame Othello when Emilia asks her what has happened and makes no attempt to seek justice. She is actually more interested in making Othello see the truth about her reputation.

Question 15

A5, S2: Emilia: “She was too fond of her most filthy bargain”

Answer 15

Speaks almost spitefully about Desdemona and Othello’s marriage, and implies that Desdemona being too passive in the face of Othello was the cause of her downfall, reiterating her cynical views about love and marriage, again not for her own self gain.

Question 16

A5, S2: Emilia: “Thou hast killed the sweetest innocent / That e’er did lift up eye”

Answer 16

Not afraid to stand up to Othello, defying gender roles to do so (she also stands up to Iago in this passage), in a way that further foregrounds Desdemona’s moral goodness

Question 17

A5, S2: Othello: “Are there no stones in heaven / But what serve for the thunder? Precious villain!”

Answer 17

Old-fashioned belief, even for the time, which shows his backwardness. It shows his realisation that he does not live in an age where heroes and villains and obvious and clear-cut and how easily he was duped by Iago, and how he wishes he could’ve seen and realised what was happening more easily

Question 18

A5, S2: Othello: “Behold. I have a weapon / A better never did itself sustain / Upon a soldier’s thigh”

Answer 18

Speaks in terms of military lexis. This implies in particular the conflict between his military background and his relationship and how they cannot coexist as they are fundamentally different

Question 19

A5, S2: Othello:”Who can control his fate?”

Answer 19

Idea of inevitability and Othello’s inability to control his fate - progression of a tragedy

Question 20

A5, S2: Othello: “Here is my journey’s end, here is my butt, / And the very sea-mark of my utmost sail”

Answer 20

Awareness of his death, but he speaks about it in military terms - reinforces earlier ideas, but also shows a sense of anagnorisis

Question 21

A5, S2: Othello: “Man but a rush against Othello’s breast, / And he retires. Where should Othello go?”

Answer 21

Refers to himself in 3rd person, almost reifying himself because of his internalised objectification, as well as showing his insanity

Question 22

A5, S2: Othello: “O ill-starred wench!”

Answer 22

Projects his own guilt onto the concept of fate itself, indicating he cannot fully accept the blame due to his lack of self-awareness

Question 23

A5, S2: Othello: “From the possession of this heavenly sight. / Blow me about in winds. Roast me in sulphur. Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire”

Answer 23

Hellish imagery, showing he believes he deserves his hellish fate, emphasised by the contrast of heaven and hell

Question 24

A5, S2: Othello: “I have done the state some service, and they know’t. / No more of that”

Answer 24

Like what he has said back in Act 1 as this was a way he has used before to get them to listen to him, as he has taught himself as a thing to be used and that he is only valued while he is useful to the state, however he abandons this

Question 25

A5, S2: Othello: “Then must you speak / Of one that loved not wisely but too well; / Of one, not easily jealous, but being wrought / Perplexed in the extreme”

Answer 25

Admits his gullibility and naivety, showing he is too simple for the cunning and manipulative ways of Venetian society as he is not duplicitous in anyway. Shakespeare uses this to criticise Venetian society by showing the psychological effect of being an outsider because of how Othello has been treated because of his race, but may also be a slightly racist point about how he cannot understand because he isn’t white.
May also reference how his marriage to Desdemona was unwise because of how society would view it and how the state would react

Question 26

A5, S2: Othello: “Of one whose hand, / Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away / Richer than all his tribe”

Answer 26

“Whose hand” suggests there is an outside agency controlling his hand, rather than it being his fault directly. He also compares himself to another racial outsider, showing his internalised inferiority and how he judges himself by European standards

Question 27

A5, S2: Othello: “Where a malignant and turbaned Turk / Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, / I took by th’throat the circumcised dog / And smote him this”

Answer 27

Othello wants to be thought of as a war hero, so he ends his speech with a story of how he saved Venice