The Human Nature of Othello

Othello's human nature comes through in a number of ways in Shakespeare's play of the same name. Othello is presented in a heroic light but at the same time his faults and failings are more than apparent and become increasingly pronounced as the drama unfolds. First, his willfulness is on display when he elopes with Desdemona, the daughter of a senator without the consent of her father, who he knows would not approve. Second, his jealousy is piqued by Iago, who looks to bring down the Moor and ruin his life. Third, his murderous actions indicate the full extent of his fall from grace and show just how far human nature can go wrong once the slippery slide from reason and the righteous path is deviated from. This paper will examine how Othello's human nature is represented in the play and how Shakespeare's treatment of Othello expresses the author's own sense of the frailty of human nature and how easily it can succumb to wicked temptations -- or, more precisely, how human nature consists of both good and bad elements competing for control of the soul.

When the play begins, Othello has already secretly married Desdemona, which is a fact that Iago looks to exploit: it raises contention among the senators -- they approve of Othello's valor and his wartime deeds in defense of the State but they disapprove of the sneaking around with Desdemona. However, both Othello and Desdemona give accounts of their actions and seem to justify them to the senators' satisfaction -- at least all the senators that is except for Desdemona's father, who warns Othello, "She has deceived her father and may thee" (1.3.334). Indeed, Iago echoes this warning two Acts later when he tells Othello, "She did deceive her father, marrying you," (3.3.209). While Desdemona's virtues in terms of faithfulness are never suspected by the audience, they are by Othello -- precisely because this warning has been fired into his ear by two different persons and it plays upon his psyche, hammering his human nature down from the place of nobility that it has occupied as a soldier to a place wherein it is wholly unfamiliar with its role -- that of domesticity. In fact, as a domestic partner, Othello is very weak and has no experience, learning or training. This warning is like a stark foreshadowing of the doubts that will come to plague Othello and drive him towards murder later in the play. The point of this early episode in Act 1 is given by Shakespeare to show that Othello is not without his human weaknesses: instead of confronting Desdemona's father man to man and seeking his approval (and accepting the response even if negative), Othello shows that he is willing to call into question his own nobility when another presses him to do so (in this case, it is Desdemona who pushes for the elopement).

As Iago begins to try to bring the Moor down, Othello's human nature becomes more and more apparent: far from being the perfect man whom Othello takes him to be, he is clearly a character who is troubled by doubts, whose self-confidence is weak (especially since he is an outsider among the Venetians) and whose feelings are worked over by the wily and treacherous Iago. However, it is Othello himself who is culpable for the final undoing: he himself deliberately acquiesces to the lower nature that is in him and allows it to overthrow his higher nature. If human nature is capable of both extremes, the highs and the lows, Shakespeare shows Othello to be the perfect example of the actualities of human nature. This is especially evident when he cries, "Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne / To tyrannous hate!" (3.3.508-9). At the same time, Othello tries to rationalize this ugliness later in Act 5 when he states, "For naught I did in hate, but all in honor" (5.2.347), which is of course a complete contradiction to what he says earlier. In this, Shakespeare appears to be showing that human nature is such that it is quite capable of contradicting itself, of attempting to rationalize irrational behavior, and of stooping to the basest of desires after giving way to all manner of evil thoughts and inclinations.

The basest of desires that Othello gives in to consist of his desire for complete control over Desdemona and for her blood when he suspects that he does not have that control. Yet, in complete consistency with showing how human nature can swing from high to low and back again, Shakespeare has Othello remark at the end of the play, after he has realized his own guilt and confessed all to those who stand around aghast at the horror that they have found in his bedchamber: "No way but this, killing myself to die upon a kiss (5.2.420-21)." Othello acknowledges that he has murdered Desdemona and in so doing has murdered innocence itself -- but that in acknowledging he also sees that he himself is not fit to love -- and yet at the same time he desperately wants to cling to that innocence which he has killed; thus he seeks to kill himself while also giving Desdemona a farewell kiss. This is human nature attempting to be two things at once -- both good and bad. And, thus, even in Othello's end the audience is left with no easy interpretation of the man -- which is really what Shakespeare is saying about human nature itself: that it is impossible to judge.

In conclusion, Othello represents human nature's qualities in their fullest: he has the good and noble qualities as well as the bad and evil qualities. He demonstrates both throughout the play and in the end he mixes them together to such extent that he is impossible to judge. He is the perfect example of human nature, because he embodies the extremes to their fullest.

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. Othello. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/othello/full.html