Othello Essay: Iago's Justice

At some point or another, everyone is passed over whether it was a younger sibling getting the last piece of pie or someone less experienced getting a pay raise or promotion. It is not fair. That unfairness makes some angry and bitter. People desire a just and fair world. The need for a just world is a valuable attribute, but when a person takes justice into his/her own hands it can end badly. In a tragedy such as Othello by William Shakespeare, the character, Iago, falls not from an excess of evil but from an excess of good. In the beginning, Iago just wanted to get the justice he believed he deserved. The difference between the audience and Iago is the character traits that make Iago the villain. Iago need for justice and the way he goes about obtaining said justice reveals his true character: bitter, hateful,

With a wounded pride Iago confides in his friend Roderigo. Iago reports Othello’s decision as well as Iago’s response to it: “‘I have already chose my officer.’ / And what was he? / Forsooth, a great arithmetician, / One Michael Cassio, a Florentine” (1.1.17-20). After all that Iago has done for Othello, Iago has been passed over for a younger, inexperienced person. Iago feels that “he has been done a gratuitous injustice” (McCloskey 25). Everyone has experienced some type of injustice, and this fact helps the audience connect to Iago, because both parties have taken matters into their own hands. The critic John C. McCloskey writes, “Iago is a man seeking justice who, having right on his side but no recourse to law… takes affairs into his own hands and devotes his intelligence and efficiency to obtaining for himself what he interprets as justice” (McCloskey 26). However, the audience loses that connection quickly when Iago’s true personality begins to emerge as he delves deeper into the pit of