Othello as Aristotle's Tragic Hero: A Literary Analysis

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: it arises from the combination of his greatness and his own responsibility in causing his ruin. Fourth, the misfortune Othello suffers is enormous, owing to the fact that he himself is larger than life. Fifth, the fall Othello suffers does come with an increase of awareness — self-knowledge that restores something 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 that Shakespeare's play adheres to the model of an Aristotelian tragedy.

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 entirely.

Othello's nobility is established early in the play, conveyed to the audience even by his 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 precisely what 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 powerful 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 race, too, is central to the father's objection: Othello is a Moor, and it would have been considered unseemly for a Venetian to marry a Moor — no matter how noble he was — 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 believing that 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 — a transgression of which she is completely innocent. It is this criminal act that completes Othello's fall and his total reversal of fortune, taking him 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, and that his wife had always been true and faithful. He sees that he himself has acted like a dog, and to punish himself he takes his own life. Before doing so, he tells those looking on to speak honestly of what has become of him and to tell his story truthfully: "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 recognizes in himself the "turbaned Turk" he has become while simultaneously restoring something of his honor by acknowledging the Venetian he had once been. In taking the dog by the throat and killing the brute, he kills himself. Yet his last words are to the dead Desdemona: "I kissed thee 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, yet insists on executing justice upon himself. It is a devastating ending that leaves the audience gasping.

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, the action introduced by Iago and concluded similarly. The fall of Othello is the play's central focus.