How Is Jealousy Used In Othello

Heartbreak— the foreboding word that many people fear. Whether it is a small whisper of disappointment or the more common, excruciating ordeal associated with a lost or ‘stolen’ love; like many situations, every individual has a different coping mechanism. Yes, the conventional indulging of twenty-something ice cream buckets do apply. However, in the midst or aftermath of a heartbreak, an individual’s pain and sorrow often manifest into a series of alternative emotions such as anger, but more specifically— jealousy. Likewise, in Rupert Brooke’s Jealousy and the excerpt from William Shakespeare’s Othello (III.iii.255-275), both of the speakers’ expression of betrayal by their ex-lovers is built upon a foundation of jealousy. Brooke’s poem

Evidently, Brooke takes a more resentful, punitive route in regards to the subject, whereas, Othello feels internally bruised, with his jealousy being the byproduct of grievance. Though jealousy is a common factor in both passages, the purposeful usage of literary devices are employed to convey these differing attitudes towards their former lover, themselves and their outlook on love as a whole.

Though both of the speakers are fueled by jealousy, there is a difference in regards to whom is being targeted and how each speaker speaks of those individuals. In Jealousy, the narrator directs a concentrated feeling of hatred more towards his ex-lover's new partner, instead of her. The audience witnesses this in the lines: ‘[a]nd you, that loved young life and clean, must tend / A foul fumbling dribbling body and old, / when his rare lips hang flabby and can’t hold / Slobber, and you’re enduring the worst thing’ (Brooke, 23-26). It is very clear that the speaker is not too fond of the ‘other man’, by the usage of rather disgusting imagery to describe him.

On the surface, the narrator in Jealousy is perceived as extremely vain and, of course —jealous and Othello, as insecure. The narrator in Jealousy can be seen as quite condescending and thinks very highly of himself since he repetitively ridicules his ex-lover’s new partner and their relationship as a whole, yet refuses to pin any variation of blame or fault upon himself in order to avoid humiliation. For example, ‘[s]enility’s queasy furtive love-making, / And searching those dear eyes for human meaning [...] Then you’ll be tired; and passion dead and rotten;’ (Brooke, 27-31). Words carrying a melancholic connotation such as ‘dead’ and ‘rotten’, have once again made an appearance once again proving that the narrator deeply resents their relationship. There is a rhyming scheme that, though is fluctuant, generates a sense of precise and constructive sentence structure. This is an indicator of the narrator’s fluid, constructed anger, since if he felt grief instead of covetousness, the sentence structure would be more scattered and inarticulate. In regards to William Shakespeare’s Othello, there was no rhyming scheme present. This ‘broken’ rhyming scheme or structure is a representation of how Othello really feels—broken and hurt. There is an absence of rhythm unlike in the poem Jealousy, which shows Othello’s scatter-mindedness, being unable to grasp the