Iago's Manipulation Of Jealousy In Othello

In Othello, Shakespeare intentionally made emotion a major flaw because it causes the characters to be easily manipulated and may cause the character to lose rational. Shakespeare did this to show strong of an emotion jealously is. Because of jealousy Iago is able to manipulate every character he talks to, whether they were minor like Brabantio, the father of Desdemona, or a major character like Othello, the Moor, the General, and supposedly Hero. If it weren’t for the jealously then the ending of Othello wouldn’t be so tragic. Othello’s jealously overcame Othello’s love, which made him blind to the truth. Shakespeare could have intentionally make jealously related to tragedy.

In this paragraph I am going to talk about how Iago manipulated

Iago’s jealously is what caused the whole tragedy in Othello. Iago suspected of Othello to have slept with his wife. Iago had sexual jealousy which cause him to suspect Othello to be one who had intercourse with Emilia. In “Jealousy” David Suchet, the actor who played Iago in Royal Shakespeare Company, suggest that “Iago’s hidden motivation to do evil originates from his envious reactions to other principal figures in the play.” As Othello promotes Cassio over him, Iago would become envious and jealous of Cassio. We also know Iago is jealous of Cassio because in Iago’s soliloquy he said “If Cassio do remain/ He hath a daily beauty in his life/ This makes me ugly.” (5.1.18-20) What Iago is saying is, if Cassio remains alive he would be jealous because Cassio is beautiful and he is not. Iago can also mean that he is jealous of Cassio‘s daily beauty; Cassio attracts and appears to be beautiful to other characters without trying. While Iago have to pretend and manipulate people to attract other characters. The jealousy would motivate Iago to devises schemes to get revenge to Othello. Iago had to manipulate many characters in his plan to finally get back at Othello. In this plan Brabantio, Cassio, Roderigo, Othello, and even Emilia, his wife, got manipulated. Iago lost rational because of jealously, and all the actions he did was considered to be evil. Iago would represent the devil

Othello is an old Moor General, which is why he feels lucky when Desdemona chose him. This is because Desdemona was viewed as perfection and a goddess, who rejected all other White people in Venice asked for her hand. In Cyprus Othello gets planted a seed of jealousy by Iago. Iago would try to infer that Desdemona is cheating. Othello didn’t know how to react because he trusted Iago but at the same time trusted Desdemona. However as Iago brought in more false evidence through his schemes, Othello’s jealously started to manifest. Othello started to think that Cassio was sleeping with Desdemona. Othello’s believed he was a cuckold and started to lose more reasoning. In the beginning when Iago tried to manipulate Othello to believing Desdemona cheated, Othello would regain his reasoning from looking at her beauty. But now Othello would lose more reasoning and be in rage. Iago’s manipulation had worked, Othello easily fell for the scheme. Othello didn’t even logically think about how he knocked the handkerchief to the ground earlier, prior to when Iago said Desdemona gave it to Cassio. Even in the other schemes, when Cassio was talking to Iago about Bianca, Othello couldn’t even tell the difference between Bianca and Desdemona. This shows how Othello is losing his rational. After these schemes Iago manipulated Othello to kill Desdemona if he kills Cassio. Othello gladly agrees.