According to his father if this token were lost or given as a gift to anyone else it would mean damnation to his marriage. With the weightiness of such news it would seem only rational to preface this gift to Desdemona with the background of it before placing it in her hands. Desdemona’s response to such news is exactly as one would expect, demanding to know why he had never given her this information before. In this moment, she lies to Othello when he asks her if she has lost it saying, “It is not lost, but what an if it were?”(3.4.81). Othello’s failure to have revealed this before also makes one wonder if not his own story is a lie as well and in this paradox seals the ruin of their marriage. Magic plays a large role as noticed by Diana Purkiss stating that “the story is polysomic; it can also be read as Othello’s yearning rediscovery of his roots in African culture, so that the purport of the entire speech is to cut Desdemona off from these dark and magical women, to isolate her by her color as the Petrarchan object of desire, for
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Magic and folklore plays a large role in African culture and in the magic of this object, but likewise it is also built from the “signifiers of European witchcraft” therefore resulting in a combination of magical witchcraft and ethnicity (Purkiss, 264). In the same way that magic has the ability to illuminate what it wants one to see while darkening the simplicity of its reality, Iago manages to illuminate the fair Desdemona and darken her surroundings to provide Othello with a unrealistic image of her. Consequently it illuminates the darkness within Othello, demonstrating the ability that jealousy and rage can have if not properly dealt with. This is the first way that Iago is able to encourage others to act overly irrational. Othello’s reference for this object is thus: a fundamental token of love holding his marriage together, history from his culture and mother and finally the physical ocular proof he begged to have
Magic and folklore plays a large role in African culture and in the magic of this object, but likewise it is also built from the “signifiers of European witchcraft” therefore resulting in a combination of magical witchcraft and ethnicity (Purkiss, 264). In the same way that magic has the ability to illuminate what it wants one to see while darkening the simplicity of its reality, Iago manages to illuminate the fair Desdemona and darken her surroundings to provide Othello with a unrealistic image of her. Consequently it illuminates the darkness within Othello, demonstrating the ability that jealousy and rage can have if not properly dealt with. This is the first way that Iago is able to encourage others to act overly irrational. Othello’s reference for this object is thus: a fundamental token of love holding his marriage together, history from his culture and mother and finally the physical ocular proof he begged to have