Shakespeare began
this play with a basic teenage love story.
A girl loves a boy who she is not allowed to love. The girl, Desdemona, is head over heels for
the Moor Othello. However, her father it
seems has set up a marriage for her with another man, Roderigo. Now Roderigo is
bribing Iago, an old captain in the army, to give wonderful gifts and sums of
money to Desdemona to win her over. When
they hear that Desdemona and Othello have run off, the two men race to her
father’s house to tell him of the news. Upon hearing this, Brabantio, goes a
little crazy and asks all the neighbors to help find Desdemona. “Give me a taper! Call up all my people!” (Line
139)
Once Brabantio
gathers all his neighbors, Iago fears that he will do anything to get back at
Othello for taking away his daughter. However, Othello believes that what he
has done for his country will protect him from whatever Brabantio has to say. “Let
him do his spite. My services which I have done the Signiory Shall out-tongue
his complaints.” (Lines 17-19) When Othello is confronted by Brabantio he stays
calm as to show off the poise character Shakespeare wrote him to be. His character is very confident as that he
believe that nothing can get in his way and with everything that he has
accomplished he is invincible to these commoners (Brabantio and his neighbors).
In my opinion,
Shakespeare’s beginning to this tragedy is one to not be forgotten. It sets the tone for the rest of the play and
foreshadows what is to come. I do not
quite understand how and why Othello came about to his duties of general. I thought that at this time in history,
people of African American heritage were looked down upon as slaves or
indentured servants. Any thoughts??
As for the main
theme of what I have read so far, I believe it is that you cannot limit
yourself because of who you were born as.
That sounds like a stretch for only reading the first two scenes of this
play but that is how I see it.
If you look deeper
into the chemistry between the characters you can identify the tensions between
a few of them. I believe that Iago is
under major influence of Roderigo and Othello to only better himself, and to be
seen as the best man for the job. However, he does seem to botch all the chores
that are given to him which I think will eventually get back to him. I can see this happening because Roderigo is
already thinking that having Iago bribe Desdemona was obviously a bad choice on
his part, “Tush! Never tell me? I take it much unkindly That thou, Iago, who
hast had my purse As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this.”
To
conclude, that is what I believe is going on so far in the tragedy of Othello. :)
I didn't catch that Roderigo was suposed to marry Desdemona or that he was having Iago bribe her to win her over. I think that Roderigo may have been having Iago bribe Desdemona as it seems within his charector, but I don't think that he was promised to marry Desdemona himself. When Roderigo and Iago go to Barbantio's house and Barbantio sees Roderigo he says something to the effect of, "I've already told you, you can't have her." or something like that. Later when he finds out that she is gone he says that he would have rather seen her be with Roderigo, but this is after the fact. Going back to what you said about how Othello got his position, I think that he must have been at the right place at the right time. He had to have been favored by the right people and some of those people probably had to take a fall for Othello to get to where he is now. I think that Othello will ultimatly get taken down by a small mistake he makes that the senetors blow out of porportion because they don't particularly like the idea of a moor having power. It's also possible that they like giving someone like Othello power because they think he will be easy to control.
ReplyDeleteI also wonder how Othello got his power since he is of African heritage. It seems a little strange to me. I also agree that Othello is confident that he will not be captured and he has no fear. Really great start so far!
ReplyDeleteSorry I didn't comment hear earlier Maggie, I thought I had, I definitely read and graded the post. Good work.
ReplyDelete