Last Day In Othello

It’s well-known by now that change is the law of life. People change, they grow, become better people and, in some cases, they become worse. Someone on a given day is not the person they were the day before, and that couldn’t be any more true in William Shakespeare’s Othello. Among his most well-known pieces, it is a brief, fictional account of the last days of an unfortunate Venetian Moor, Othello. Essentially, the tale of a man with no other option but to wade through instances of betrayal by his closest associates, death, discrimination and just about any other scandalous situation that could come his way. A sequence of events capable of breaking even the strongest of men, the very thing that they did. The fall of a man who simply wished …show more content…
Following the inception of his complex and scandalous plot involving fabricated cases of infidelity, the misplacement of handkerchiefs, several murders, injuries, deranking of officers, the Moor had had enough. Beginning with the Iago’s first step, the lie that brought the entire plot into fruition, that Othello’s wife of a few days, Desdemona, the subtle hint that she has been seeing Cassio behind his back, our tragic hero descended his first step into madness. Once a loving, prideful, courageous man, the first signs of his gradual change to his eventual cold-hearted, cynical, frantic persona can be witnessed during the third scene of the third act, while sarcastically referring to it himself. “I would have been happy if the entire army, even down to the common soldier and the manual laborers, had tasted her sweet body so long as I knew nothing about it. But now farewell to tranquil mind… Othello’s profession is gone (iii.iii.165).” Following Iago’s questioning of whether or not the Moor was being serious, he’s quick to place his hand on Iago’s neck and begin to strangle him, following with the a threat, “If you’re slandering her and torturing me, don’t bother to pray, don’t hope for mercy.Horrors are heaped on the head of the one who causes horror (iii.iii.166).” A rather empty threat, as well as ironic, solely for the reason that once Othello believes such infidelity to be the case, he responds by …show more content…
Towards the end of the play, Othello has given up his tolerance of Desdemona despite her not doing a thing to betray their commitment. Now with a heart of stone, believing that the just punishment for her supposed deeds is her demise by his hands, he retires her to bed, unintentionally carrying through Iago’s plan of exerting as much of his sociopathic rage to those around him. Once she’s in bed, Othello, ready to follow through, enters her room and attempts to follow through in the darkness, a rather symbolic moment depicting where Othello is, from a moral standpoint. By this point, Iago has succeeded in bringing down the