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Connotation In Othello

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As I drive down a winding rode in 2015, listening to the song, Fall For You, by Second Hand Seronade, I thought about the lyrics and found they did not really apply to my life. Fast foward three years, and I can hardly listen to that song without being flooded with memories. How is it that one song can have an entirely different meaning years down the road? Well, the answer is time. Just as the meaning of that song changed for me, the connotation of words, social norms, and style of conversation can change too. If Othello was written in the 21st Century, it might differ in regards to Iago’s relationship with the audience, the significance of Othello’s race, and the representation of female characters.
In the play, Iago uses iambic pentameter …show more content…

Even times when Iago said, “Even now, now, very now, and old black Ram is tupping you're white ewe” (Shakespeare 3), it was not directed as a racial slur. Rather the focus was on Barbantio’s daughter having sexual intercourse with a much older man. In 1603 when the play was published, there was not negetive connotation behind words used to describe people of African descent, because chattel slavery in the Americas did not begin until after Othello was written. Terefore when Shakespeare wrote Othello, he did not have African slavery in mind. Fast forward to the 21st century, where phrases like, “thick lipped” and “sooty bosom”, become derogatory phrases with hundreds of years of African dehumanization, slavery, and oppression. As a result, the reader will look further into the way characters in Othello describe Othello than Shakespeare intended. To keep racial tension at Bay, while still keeping Othello as an outsider, the origin of his character should be changed. Unfortunately, the connotation of words that describe African people are negative, and even without these terms there's no way to get around the history that comes with a Othello being a black man. However if everything the stayed same, it would add to the tesnsions between Othello's character and the other characters, and the complexity of the

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white have created conflict between the members of the play. Since the 16th century dictates that black people, or Moors, are inferior to white people, Othello is stuck in the darkness as an outsider; thus suggesting that interlopers are alone, not part of a community. Within these contrasting worlds, outsiders, like Othello, try to integrate into society, but can’t. For instance, this ingrained mindset portraying the inferiority of black people is further shown when Othello exclaims, “Her name, that was as fresh as Dian’s visage, is now begrimed and black / As mine own face.”

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