Othello's character

• ‘For Christian shame, put by this barbarous brawl’


  Othello has Chrisitan status, which is associated with civility. It is animalistic behaviour in contrast to the well respected Othello.
• ‘Excellent wretch’


  oxymoron Othello uses to characterise his status as a foolish, out-of-control lover.
• Othello's mental decline in Act 4, scene 1


  at the end of his speech we struggle to make any sense of Othello’s words ‘Pish! Noses, ears and lips. Is’t possible? / Confess? handkerchief? O devil!' These lines suggest the hero’s degradation and degeneration
• Othello's speech in Act 4, Scene 1


  Othello’s speech is laden with hyphens, caesuras and fragmented sentences all while he diverts from his orderly measured speech in blank verse which indicates the extent of Othello’s overwhelming jealousy to the point where his speech is visibly distorted.
• This scene


  • Othello's lowest point, just before he falls to the ground in an epileptic fit
• Othello's fractured sense of self


  Conveyed through the lexis and syntax
• Othello previously spoke in first and third person


  Conveyed his nobility and status as hero
• Now Othello's use of pronouns in his speech are "we", "they", "his", "I", "me"


  Disorderly, fragmented, and chaotic which mirrors his state of mind, suggesting his insecurity
• Othello's insecurity


  Furthered through the hyphens coupled with exclamations all of which serves to emphasise his mental deterioration at the hands of the malignant Iago
• ‘Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee, / And love thee after. One more, and that’s the last. / So sweet was ne’er so fatal’


  paradox. Othello’s internal turmoil. The juxtaposition of ‘sweet’ and ‘fatal’ is internal conflict
• ‘Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk / Beat a Venetian and traduced the state’


  The play comes full circle as Othello addresses his race and suggests its part in his barbaric dissent as well as Iago’s role through a malignant, in killing Desdemona and wronging society
• Othello: 'When Othello delivers his speech he asks the other characters to describe him in the future as he is, which is a man who "loved too much" and not to exaggerate the one mistake he made. He admits that, due to being "perplexed in the extreme," he threw away something more precious than anything else.'
• Othello asks to be remembered

  As a loyal Venetian soldier who killed a Turk with a sword
• Othello's suicide


  Parallels the act of stabbing the Turk, implying his suicide is a kind of service to the Venetian state
• Suicide in Greek and Roman tragedies


  • Seen as a noble way to protect one's honour from disgrace, making Othello's act of killing himself heroic
• Othello kills himself after killing Desdemona, preserving no nobility or honour, all of it has diminished
• Othello's suffering


  The mention of Othello being tricked into “extreme jealousy” coupled with the series of hyperbolic exclamations in his speech moments before where he laments “Blow me about in the winds! Roast me in Sulphur! Wash me in steep down gulfs of liquid fire!” the images of pain and torment reflecting the feelings which are coming over him emphasises Othello’s suffering and the horror of his moment of anagnorisis (the point in which a principal character recognizes another character's true identity)
• Othello's final speech in iambic pentameter


  Within othello's final speech he speaks in iambic pentameter which is in stark contrast to his previous speech in prose. The migration from prose back to iambic pentameter reflects Othello's reprisal of his loss of dignity and the hands of Iago.
• ‘You must speak of one that loved wisely but not too well’

  reveals degree of Othello’s confusion. He loved Desdemona too well, yet was too trusting. Some believe Othello’s actions to have been protecting his reputation, making it an honour killing.