Othello Revision Resource

Question 1

Othello

Answer 1

Tragic hero, he is a general in the Venetian army
Insecure due to his race and age

Question 2

Iago

Answer 2

Machiavellian tragic villain

Question 3

Desdemona

Answer 3

Tragic victim, she is initially determined and outspoken, but becomes increasingly passive

Question 4

What is a tragic hero?

Answer 4

Is a noble, but with hamartia that leads to peripeteia.
His race meant that he had to earn a noble position not by birth, but by merit.

Question 5

What is the tragic villain?

Answer 5

Exerts external pressure on the tragic hero

Question 6

What is the tragic victim?

Answer 6

Suffers and is killed. This suffering is linked to society’s treatment of women- links to gender roles in patriarchy. This evokes pathos and misery in the audience. Women were dehumanised to cathartic outlets for men to unleash and purge their anger onto and this links to the Fall in the Old Testament where eve was evil bc she disobeyed god’s orders and manipulated Adam into eating it, therefore this feeds the patriarchy’s paranoia of all women inheriting evilness as they are descendants of eve, thus, amplifying the patriarchy’s hysteria and populist depiction of women.

Question 7

Race in renaissance england

Answer 7

Queen Elizabeth I ordered that black people should be executed
Great chain of being thus iagos animalistic descriptions of othello reflect contemporary xenophobia. Moors/non-europeans= violent,aggressive and more easily subjected to being criminalised for succumbing to violent rage that are believed to be inherited, scapegoated for disease and immorality bc of colour imagery black vs white. Society’s paranoia of their otherness being dangerous and their mistreatment and marginalisation mirrors this hysteria.
Post colonial critics argue that in literature people of different races are presented as the ‘other’- something to be feared.

Question 8

Othello and race

Answer 8

He internalises the racist ideology of those around him, this leads to the insecurity in his marriage. Thus the external pressures on othello becomes internal pressures.

Question 9

Gender and the patriarchy

Answer 9

Women subservient to men, confined to the domestic sphere n were expected to provide a stable point of morality and innocence in a chaotic,corrupt world .
A time of change: 17 th century Elizabeth has shown that women could hold power, however Shakespeare’s characters are caught in this tumultuous change in power, and whilst they hope for a different better world, they find themselves entrapped by the expectations of traditional society.

Question 10

What is othellos hamartia?

Answer 10

Jealousy; his blindness to the inherent racism of his society[ accelerated by iago] , faith in the honesty of human nature.
Othello rashly jumps to the worst conclusions about his wife, believes iago.