The Effectiveness Of Iago In William Shakespeare's Othello

Iago gives a soliloquy at the end of Act 1 that depicts what he wants to do to go about his plan. Iago desires to persuade the audience, which are the readers of the soliloquy, that his plan of taking revenge on Othello will work. Iago effectively persuades the audience his effectiveness of his plan to suspect Desdemona of cheating on Othello by utilizing hasty generalization, diction, and hyperbole.
Iago gives a statement that is hastily generalized near the start of his soliloquy. Hasty generalization is a logical fallacy that draws conclusions from insufficient evidence. Iago states,
“He’s done my office” (1.3.370), meaning Othello has slept with Iago’s wife. Just hearing suspicion about the idea that Iago’s wife is cheating on him with

Conveying this hasty generalization, however, to the audience is effective because the audience now wants answers to Iago’s statement. Iago was deliberate in stating a hasty generalization like this because he wants the audience to have the idea that Iago is justified in his revenge. If the audience thinks that Iago is justified and wants questions answered, they are more likely to consider Iago’s plan and listen thoroughly. This makes Iago’s plan effective because the hasty generalization paves the pathway for even more rhetoric used by Iago to persuade his audience of his plan.
At the end of the soliloquy, Iago employs diction through the use of connotations to make a lasting impression on the audience. Diction in terms of connotation is word choice that emphasize the associations of a given word. Iago utilizes diction when he says, “Hell and night
[m]ust bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light” (1.3.385-386). Iago chooses the word
“Hell” with the use of “night” in order to strongly suggest that only the work of the devil can successfully exact revenge on Othello. This diction justifies Iago in the sense that the audience might think Iago is wrong in his ways of taking revenge on Othello, but the diction used

Normally, people are retaliated against a monster, which is the reason that Iago uses this diction. By associating Othello with a monster, Iago gives the impression that everyone else will think Othello is monstrous and Iago’s plan will succeed since everyone must hate monsters. Utilizing diction to convey these ideas was an effective choice for
Iago because Othello is associated with being monstrous and must be saved.
The line “Hell and night [m]ust bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light” (1.3.385-
386) stated by Iago can also be considered a hyperbole. A hyperbole is an exaggerated expression can emphasize strong feelings or thoughts. Iago is not literally meaning that Othello must be saved to the world’s light by the work of the devil. Iago states this hyperbole because he wants to invoke strong thoughts into the audience; Iago must exact revenge on Othello. Iago’s plan is thought to be more effective by the audience through this use of hyperbole because