Who is othello

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Unfortunately, payments are no longer supported by Mastercard in your web browser Mozilla 0. Please either update your browser to the newest version, or choose an alternative browser — visit here or here for help. Othello is an outsider who is intelligent and confident in military matters but socially insecure. He leads an intense life, swinging between triumph and dread.

He is different from those around him, due to his origins and his life history, but he shares their religion, values, and patriotism to Venice. More importantly, he is visibly different due to the color of his skin, so he lives constantly among, but separated from, other people. Whenever they look at his black face, however brilliant a general he is, he knows the others are thinking "Yes, but he is not really one of us.

When other characters call him "black," they refer to his face but also to the concept of color symbolism in Elizabethan morality: White is honor, black is wickedness; white is innocence, black is guilt. Othello tells his life story to Desdemona, and she sees him through his words. The life of early separation from home and family, followed by danger and adventure, is perhaps the life story of thousands of men down the ages who become soldiers of fortune and who end up as corpses in ditches at an early age, unwept, unpaid, and unrecorded.

Othello's achievement is not so much that he survived this unpromising life, but that he survived it in such a spectacularly successful manner, ending up one of the most powerful men in the Venetian defense forces. On the field of battle Othello is skilled and triumphant; in the drawing room he is reluctant until Desdemona takes the lead and encourages him to tell his life story.

It is Desdemona, as well as Othello, who turns the secret marriage into a social success with her skillfully worded defense. He is triumphant in war and in love, the hero at his greatest moment. Such triumph, in a tragedy, cannot last. Othello is aware of the precarious nature of success and happiness.

These are the words of a man who knows chaos and believes himself to have been rescued from it by love. Love for Othello puts order, peace, and happiness into his mental world, which would otherwise lapse back into chaos. Why does Iago hate Othello? How does Emilia help Iago? How does Iago use Bianca to trick Othello? Why does Iago hate Cassio? Why does Roderigo wake up Brabantio?

Why does Othello go to Cyprus? Why does Roderigo agree to kill Cassio? Does Cassio die? How does Roderigo die? Does Othello kill Desdemona? Why does Emilia die? Does Othello die? Characters Character List. Desdemona The daughter of the Venetian senator Brabanzio.