Othello as a Tragic Hero

Thesis Statement
Shakespeare’s Othello is a tragic hero according to the definition of Aristotle. First, he is a man of noble stature. Second, he is good—but not perfect—and his fall is directly attributable to his own guilty actions. Third, his fall is tragic—the combination of his greatness and his own responsibility in causing his own fall. Fourth, the misfortune Othello suffers is enormous and due to the fact that he himself is larger than life. Fifth, the fall that Othello suffers does come with an increase of awareness—self-knowledge that restores a bit of his wisdom and nobility before the curtain falls; he exits not cursing his fate but taking responsibility for his own crimes and acknowledging the justice delivered upon himself. Sixth, the play achieves a cathartic effect by arousing pity and fear in the audience in which the emotions are purified or purged; instead of feeling depressed by what has been witnessed the audience is filled with compassion and awe, fear and trepidation. The language used throughout the play is appropriate and pleasurable, and the play provides the best of all tragic plots according to the Aristotelian model: it consists of a reversal and a discovery. This paper will show that Othello fits Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero and Shakespeare’s play adheres to the model of an Aristotelian tragedy.
Outline
I. Introduction
a. What is a Tragedy?
b. Is Othello a tragic hero?
c. Is Shakespeare’s play an Aristotelian tragedy?
II. Body
a. Elements that make Othello a tragic hero
i. He is noble
ii. He is good but flawed and commits a criminal act
iii. His fall is his own doing
iv. His fall is immense but it comes with the gaining of wisdom
b. Elements that make the play an acceptable Aristotelian tragedy
i. The play is serious and complete and imitates a dramatic action, effecting catharsis
ii. The language is pleasurable and appropriate
iii. The chief characters are noble
iv. The plot involves a change in the protagonist’s fortune
v. The fall is a result of the hero’s criminal action
vi. The plot has organic unity—events follow because of one another
vii. It has the best plot—it involves a reversal and a discovery
III. Conclusion
a. Othello is a tragic hero
b. The play meets Aristotle’s criteria for a tragedy.
Introduction
Shakespeare’s Othello is a tragic hero according to the definition of Aristotle. First, he is a man of noble stature. Second, he is good—but not perfect—and his fall is directly attributable to his own guilty actions. Third, his fall is tragic—the combination of his greatness and his own responsibility in causing his own fall. Fourth, the misfortune Othello suffers is enormous and due to the fact that he himself is larger than life. Fifth, the fall that Othello suffers does come with an increase of awareness—self-knowledge that restores a bit of his wisdom and nobility before the curtain falls; he exits not cursing his fate but taking responsibility for his own crimes and acknowledging the justice delivered upon himself. Sixth, the play can be considered an Aristotelian tragedy because it achieves a cathartic effect by arousing pity and fear in the audience—or, as Schaper (1968) explains, by purifying the emotions and purging them of any ugliness; instead of feeling depressed by what has been witnessed the audience is filled with compassion and awe, fear and trepidation. The language used throughout the play is appropriate and pleasurable, and the play provides the best of all tragic plots according to the Aristotelian model: it contains a reversal and a discovery. This paper will show, therefore, that Othello fits Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero and Shakespeare’s play adheres to the model of an Aristotelian tragedy.
Othello as Tragic Hero
What makes a tragic hero according to Aristotle? He must be noble and larger than life, yet his undoing should be the result of his own actions, and in his fall—which should be great—he should gain insight. Othello meets these criteria 100%.
Othello’s nobility is shown early on in the play. It is told to the audience by the arch-nemesis Iago, who hates the Moor. Othello is admired by all the Venetian senators and has performed valiantly in battle in defense of the city-state. He has won honor and prestige and his gallantry, greatness and nobility are what have attracted Desdemona to him. Moreover, Othello speaks beautifully and elegantly—so much so that even after he elopes with Desdemona (to the shock and horror of her father), the Moor is able to justify his actions before the Senate. Bates (2007) notes that Othello’s words are so wonderful that the Moor is “capable of mesmerizing the hardened heads of the Venetian Senate” in just a few short lines (p. 190).
However, it is in the hasty elopement that the seeds of Othello’s fall are planted (Bradley, 1951; Kirsch, 1978). The hero has not consulted his wife’s father because he knows the father would not have consented to the marriage. Rather, Othello has given himself up to a kind of “idolatrous love,” as Hallstead (1968) puts it (p. 107). It is this shakily-founded love that collapses later on leaving Othello in freefall. But that is not why the father would have protested. It is this: Othello is a Moor. It would have been unseemly for a Venetian to marry a Moor, no matter how noble he is, in the Senator’s eyes. Desdemona’s father thus tells Othello that “She has deceived her father and may thee” (Shakespeare, n.d., Act 1, Scene 3, ln. 334). This doubt about the honesty of his new wife grows in Othello and he gives into it the more he is plied by his false counselor Iago. Iago tempts Othello into thinking Desdemona is sleeping with Cassio until finally Othello renounces his nobility and his Christianity and turns to idolatrous hate: “Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell! / Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne / To tyrannous hate!” (Shakespeare, n.d., Act 3, Scene 3, ln. 507-9). Othello willingly indulges his anger and suspicion until he finally yields completely to it and swears to kill his wife for the perceived transgression (which of course she is completely innocent of). It is this criminal act that completes Othello’s fall and his total reversal of fortune from being the most honored and noble among men to being the most pitiful and tragic.
And yet with his fall comes insight and discovery. He learns—too late—that Iago was manipulating him the entire time, that his wife had always been true and faithful to him. He sees that he himself has acted like a dog, and to punish himself he slays himself. Before doing so, he tells those looking on to see what has become of him and to tell his story honestly: Then must you speak / Of one that loved not wisely but too well…And say besides that in Aleppo once, / Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk / Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, / I took by th’ throat the circumcised dog / And smote him thus.” In these lines, Othello is recognizing in himself the “turbaned Turk” that he has become and at the same time restoring something of his honor by recognizing the Venetian that he had become—and then he says that he is now taking back possession of his own self and taking the dog by the throat and killing the brute—and so he kills himself. Yet his last words are to the dead Desdemona: “I kissed there ‘ere I killed thee; no way but this—killing myself to die upon a kiss.” (Shakespeare, n.d., Act 5, Scene 2, ln. 420-21). These words show that he accepts responsibility for his actions and is remorseful for them but that he also must punish himself for what he has done because he insists on executing justice upon himself. It is a devastating ending that leaves the audience gasping for breath.
The Play as a Tragedy
As Aristotle notes, tragedy is the imitation of an action that is “serious and complete” and that fills the audience with pity and fear, purifying the emotions through the cathartic effect that the tragedy produces (Johnson & Arp, 2018, p. 1251). Othello is indeed a complete play with a beginning, middle and end. It is structured across five Acts and the action is introduced by Iago and concluded similarly. The fall of Othello is what the play focuses on.
The language of the play is vibrant, pleasurable and wholly appropriate. Iago’s language is often coarse and vulgar, reflecting his vile nature, while Othello’s is full of beauty and dignity. But no matter who is speaking, the language is always pleasurable to the ear. Iago, the villain, in fact, produces some of the biggest laughs.
The chief characters are noble. Othello is the general of the army that is tasked with protecting Venice. Desdemona is his beautiful wife, the daughter of a Venetian Senator. Iago is his two-faced counselor and Cassio is his right-hand man, wronged by Iago. The characters are noble—but human, which flaws that allow the misfortune to build.
The plot does involve a huge change in the hero’s fortune. Othello is on top of the world at the beginning of the play. By the end, he has literally fallen into hell. There is also discovery, however: he realizes that Iago has tricked him and that he was not just at all in killing Desdemona.
He does accept responsibility for the killing of his wife and takes his own life as a way of punishing himself for his transgression. It is not out of fear of being found out but rather out of disgust for what the dog in him has done: to kill the dog he has to kill himself, hoping that in this action some semblance of honor can be restored. It is this insight—this knowledge of his own criminal actions that completes the tragic course of the play. It is organically constructed, with each plot point following because of a previous action of the protagonists and antagonists. The protagonists act under cover of darkness in eloping and set the stage for the devil of deception to enter in. Othello falls for Iago’s tricks because he fails to believe in his own wife’s goodness. His fall is his fault. Iago merely facilitates it. The plot contains a reversal and a discovery and thus is the best of all tragic plots, according to the Aristotelian model of tragedy.
Conclusion
Othello is a tragic hero in the vein of the Aristotelian tragic hero. He meets all of Aristotle’s criteria for a tragic hero: he is noble, larger than life, good but flawed, and his fall is the result of his own actions—not of Fate. He gains insight after his fall. The play is also an Aristotelian tragedy: it includes a reversal and a discovery and produces a cathartic effect upon the audience. Its action builds upon the events so that the plot is organically constructed. It is whole, complete, serious and dramatic. And thus Shakespeare’s Othello is a tragedy and the Moor is a tragic hero.
References
Bates, C. (1997) ‘Shakespeare’s Tragedies of Love’, Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Bradley, A. (1951). Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. London: Macmillan.
Hallstead, R. N. (1968). Idolatrous Love: A New Approach to Othello. Shakespeare Quarterly, 19(2), 107-124.
Johnson, G. & Arp, T. (2018). Perrine’s Literature. Boston, MA: Cengage.
Kirsch, A. (1978). The Polarization of Erotic Love in ‘Othello’. The Modern Language Review, 73(4), 721-740.
Schaper, E. (1968). Aristotle's catharsis and aesthetic pleasure. The Philosophical Quarterly (1950-), 18(71), 131-143.
Shakespeare, W. (n.d.). The tragedy of Othello, Moor of Venice. Retrieved from http://shakespeare.mit.edu/othello/full.html