Othello Flashcards
How is Othello perceived throughout the play?
Beginning - A noble and humble man
Middle - Physiologically on the edge with his mental state eroding away
End - Perpetuating his own stereotypes through his violent actions
“I hate the Moor”
Iago - Act 1, Scene 3
AO1: declarative sentence, derogatory racial comment
AO2: enhances Iago’s hatred against Othello, despite positive reception of him (“your son-in-law is more fair than black”)
AO3: opinions of a black man in society
AO5: Honigmann - Iago derives pleasure from tormenting Othello, and this is the starting point for his hate-filled plan unfolding (Iago is “anything but straightforward”)
Repetition of “turn”
Othello - Act 4, Scene 1
AO1: Diacope
AO2: sexual innuendo with Desdemona metaphorically turning to other men and being disloyal to her husband (suggests she is on the same level as Bianca, Cassio’s true mistress) and feeding into Othello’s jealousy-fuelled delusions, displaying his transformation of character
AO3: Women in Renaissance Society
AO3: Aristotle’s Tragic Hero (exerts traits such as his hamartia: his naivete)
AO5: Nutall - the audience experience entertainment from watching the tragedy of Othello and Desdemona unfold despite having an emotional disturbance (“If people go again to see such things they must enjoy them”)
“Put out the light, and then put out the light”
Othello - Act 5, Scene 2
AO1: Epanalepsis
AO2: Othello is building up his courage to the action of murdering his wife in their marital bed (connoting sexual undertones), proving that he is every stereotype characters such as Iago and Brabantio believed about him
AO3: Stereotypes of a black man in Renaissance society
AO5: Loomba - Othello tries to escape his stereotypes but under the pressure of doing so only perpetuates them further (“Othello is both a fantasy of interracial love and societal tolerance, and a nightmare of racial hatred and male violence”)
