The Tragedy of Othello: Passion, Deception, and Self-Destruction

The Nature of Tragedy and Othello's Place in It

James Joyce, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, defines the material of tragedy as "whatever is grave and constant in human sufferings" (Campbell, 1991, p. 50). It is the humanity of tragedy which luridly draws the eye — a grotesque attraction of intermingled pity, terror, and relief. The early tragedies of literature centered on the fall of power figures — the reduction of the gods and god-like to the level of common humanity and below — precisely because the fall of the great magnified the grotesque attraction and made the reader imagine that, if the great could fall, he too was just as susceptible.

But essential to true human tragedy is a self-fulfilling aspect: that the fall is unavoidable because of the nature, psychology, and character of the fallen. It is this aspect which reminds the reader of the fallen's essential humanity. Such is the case of Othello, who, ruled by unreasoned passion, creates both the circumstances which ignite Iago's hatred and the fertile psychological conditions which press Iago's deception toward an inevitable end. Iago's work is target-specific, tailored to inflame the emotions of a man he knows too well will be ruled by those emotions. Without that particular man, the same deception would be ineffective. It is therefore logical that Othello plays a role in his own deception — a kind of conversation between two particular temperaments, both intrinsically necessary to the execution of the whole.

To understand Othello's role in his own deception, it is necessary to understand his character in full. From the play's outset, Othello is defined as only semi-civilized: a wild beast tamed for the notables of the Venetian court to employ in their amusements and wars.

Othello as Cultural Outsider in Venice

In the very title, Othello, the Moor of Venice, we have the dramatist's comment that the play is to be the story of a certain Moor, Othello, who had abandoned his native land and taken up residence in the Italian city of Venice. In doing this, Othello left his native Africa or Spain and undertook to live his life among the Venetians. The Moors of both Africa and Spain were looked upon by Englishmen and other Europeans as barbaric or semi-barbaric, while the Venetians were regarded as the most civilized and cultured people of Europe (Crawford, 1916).

Othello is not a true Venetian, though he has clearly endeavored to become one. He has taken the religion, culture, and wars of the Venetians for his own and married a Venetian noblewoman. Yet all these outward, cultural aspects of his re-patriation might be taken as merely thin veneers over an essentially barbaric nature. Certainly, by the play's end, the niceties of society have melted away from Othello's frame, and — becoming judge, jury, and executioner — he follows his own passion across the desert of his disgrace toward an oasis of revenge and honor.

The two offences with which Iago charges Othello are both matters of honor and mark phases of Othello's inability to sustain the new and exalted life of his adopted country. He was quite equal to the task of maintaining his military, or semi-barbaric, relations to the state and rose to the highest command in Venice. But in matters of personal honor he is not above reproach, and in his obtuseness offends Iago in two ways (Crawford, 1916).

Passion, it seems, is both the power and the weakness of the barbarian — a quality which, no matter how many whitewashings, Othello is unable to leave behind. He is not truly a Venetian; he is a barbarian with Venetian clothing, and for all his assimilation it requires only Iago's wit to unveil that barbarism for which society — especially society as refined as that of the Venetians — has no place.

The Soldier's Character: Loyalty, Passion, and Romanticism

It is submitted also that, at least in part, Othello is beset by the anxiety of his otherness. His cuckolding is not merely a blow to his honor, but to his faith in himself as specifically incarnated by his ability to assimilate into Venetian society despite being other than it. "If she be false, O then Heaven mocks itself," cries the Moor, indicating that the loss he experiences is not merely of honor or of a wife, but is in fact spiritual — related directly to the heaven of the Venetians and his own personal faith in it. He has not only failed in marriage; he has failed to become a part of Venetian civilization.

An important facet of Othello's character is that, though a barbarian, he is at heart and by nature essentially a soldier. First, his loyalties are grave and enduring — those of a man who has tested them in the crucible of war, who has stood alongside Iago as arrows and swords fell around them. It never occurs to Othello to question Iago's motivation or truthfulness because Iago has stood beside him in battle and been trusted with his general's life. Othello's worldview is essentially black-and-white: if he trusts a man he does so unreservedly, and if he does not trust a man he does so violently.

Second, he has a soldier's passion for action, though he lacks the specific cunning of political motivation. Othello's modus operandi is to approach any problem by the force of his command and to understand it in the light of a soldier's honor. He wrestles not with the reasons for a war — reason is a secondary faculty to the soldier given his orders — but executes that war according to his strengths, as he has learned to do in his long life of adventuring.

Third, and perhaps only tangentially, Othello has a soldier's sense of poetry and, according to Bradley, may be considered "by far the most romantic figure among Shakespeare's heroes" (Bradley, 1919). Certainly Othello's "chaste stars" and his "sword of Spain, the ice-brook's temper" are the romantic indulgences of a man who has seen a full life of war and death. Most famously, he quells the argument between Brabantio's men and his own at the story's outset by the sheer force of his poetry: "Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them." So Othello, like a soldier, is simple, direct, and of unwavering loyalty, if given to romanticism and passion. Bradley writes:

"His [Othello's] tragedy lies in this — that his whole nature was indisposed to jealousy, and yet was such that he was unusually open to deception, and, if once wrought to passion, likely to act with little reflection, with no delay, and in the most decisive manner conceivable" (Bradley, 1919).

Conclusion: The Mirror of Human Tragedy

It is important for good tragedy to be of a self-fulfilling nature. The humanity with which men can identify is that inherent to themselves — the inner knowledge that they are just as capable of spectacular failure as the great general of Venice. It is this which, looking outward to the stage as well as inward to themselves, men abhor to watch but cannot turn away from. Like roadside accidents, tragedy both draws and repels, which is what makes Othello so enduringly successful. The playgoer is treated to the spectacle of a man's self-destruction wrought by the uncontrolled passions that rule him and by his all-too-human favoritism — and therein sees the mirror of his own flawed humanity.