The Play Othello and The Thousand and One Nights - Essay Example

Student Name Instructor’s Name Course Date The play Othello and The Thousand and One Nights Introduction In this essay, I am going to provide analysis of two plays, that is, Othello and the thousand and one night. Othello got written by William Shakespeare in early 1604. The play is a timeless story of love, race, jealousy, and betrayal. Its setting is of sixteenth century Venice and Cyprus. On the other hand, the play, the thousand and one nights is also known as The Arabian Nights. It is a collection of many Middle Eastern and Indian stories whose publication dates and authors are uncertain. In the play, Othello the major dilemma is greed and jealousy. After analyzing the characters, I saw that the moral dilemma in this play is greed for power. This character is brought out by Iago. In my understanding, Iago is a character who can understand and manipulate the desires of those around him. At the begging of the play, Cassio is promoted to the lieutenant position by Othello. This act angers Iago since he believed that he was the one who to get the position because he deserved it but does not get what he wanted. Because of this, he becomes Jealous of Cassio. His jealousy is because of greed for power. Moreover, Iago is not happy with Othello for having promoted Cassio over him. He sets out to destroy both Cassio and Othello for taking his position. His first attempt to destroy Othello is when together with Roderigo goes to Brabantior’s (senator and father of Desdemona) house to tell him that his daughter had escaped to go and be with Othello. This plan does not work because the senator later allows Othello to marry Desdemona. Iago mentions that he thinks that Othello had slept with his wife and admitted to having a lust for Desdemona because he aims at getting even with Othello. This act makes him Jealous of Othello. We can see him trying to destroy both Othello and Cassio when he tells Othello about Cassio and Desdemona’s affair. On the other hand, after analyzing the play the thousand and one night, I think the dilemma is that Shahryar, who is the king, has a stereotype of women and a suspicion that they will all cheat. After it comes to his knowledge that his wife had cheated on him, he orders that she get executed. He embarks on marrying all the virgins in his kingdom and have they killed in the morning after their marriage night before they can dishonor him. I believe that he does this because of his stereotype against the women. In the play Othello, we can see that the dilemma does not get resolved. Iago does not lose his jealousy and greed for power throughout the play. We can clearly see that he is set to take revenge on everyone, Othello, Desdemona, Cassio, Roderigo, and even his wife, Emilia. On the other hand, I feel that in the play, the thousand and one night, the dilemma gets resolved. When Shahrazad offers to get married to the king, she tells him tales which makes him postpone their marriage for a thousand and one nights. Believe that their spending all this nights together is what makes the king fall in love with her and changes his perception about women and this ends the dilemma. When I was analyzing the play, is saw that both the plays have Aristotelian connotations. After examining the dilemma from both plays, I came to a conclusion that both Othello and King Shahrayar are meaningless villains. I think so because in the play Othello when Othello learns of his wife’s innocence he commits suicide. Othello changes from a good husband to a foul-minded person and swears that he will tear Desdemona into pieces after Iago convinces him that she has had been unfaithful. Othello becomes the villain when he decides to kill his wife for cheating on him with Cassio. I think what makes him a meaningless villain is the fact that he acts out of Jealousy instead of first gathering enough prove. In my opinion, King Shahrayar from the play the thousand and one nights is a meaningless villain because he believes that all women are the same just because his brother’s wife and his cheats on the both. This act makes him marry all the virgins from his kingdom only kill them in the following morning after their marriage night before they get to dishonor him. He does all this just to prove his manhood. Also, he is easily tricked by Viziers daughter by telling him tales of a thousand nights which makes him postpone their marriage. In the end falls in love with her and marries her on the thousand and one night. This marriage marks the end of his stereotype of women. After I analyzed both of the plays, I come to a conclusion that there are violence and tragedy in both of the plays. In both plays, there are senseless killings. In Othello, Iago kills his wife, Emilia for revealing his plans to others. On the other hand, King Shahryar kills 1000 thousand women after learning that his wife had cheated on him. He does so by marrying virgin girls in the kingdom and having them executed in the morning. In my view, I believe that this violence and tragedy could have got avoided if Iago accepted his position in the society. Also, if King Shahryar took his misfortune and just disowned his wife instead of dealing with his anger by killing women in the kingdom. After analyzing Iago’s character, I believe that he is a manipulative and intelligent person, and this makes him the chief villain. His style significantly impacts the plot of the play since he is the cause of all the violence and conflict in the play. He understands all the desires and weaknesses of the people around him and use this to his advantage. I think that both Othello and the thousand and one nights have Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero. Concerning Aristotle, a tragic hero is a person who evokes a sense of fear or pity in the audience. I believe that both Othello and King Shahrayar are tragic heroes but have flaws. For Othello, his flaws are jealousy and suspicion while for Shahrayar is his stereotype about all women. After analyzing all the characters in the play, I believe that both Desdemona and Shahrazad involve themselves in situations that need boldness and conflict. Desdemona does so when she decides to marry the leader of the army. She also gets required show courage when she decides to stand by her husband after her father accuses him of having witchcraft. This reason makes her father disown her. I also think that she finds her in the middle of the conflict that is brought by Iago. On the other hand, Shahrazad involves herself in situations that require boldness and conflict when she decides to marry the king knowing that he would have her killed in the morning after their marriage night. I think that Desdemona finds herself in a situation that she cannot help herself out because she cannot prove that she is innocent to her husband. She begs him to spare her life for a night, but he does not grant her wish and murders her. On the other hand, Shahrazad marries the king when he depletes all the virgin in the region even though she knows her fate is death. She has a plan that will help save all the other women in the kingdom. Her plan is to tell the King stories that will make him keep on postponing their marriage until he finally falls in love with her. I believe that she was bold to do so since she did not know whether the king would get interested in her tales and keep postponing their marriage. In the end, the king keeps postponing their marriage for a thousand and one nights and does not get a kill but marries her out of love, and makes her his queen. I believe that both plays can be considered Aristotelian tragedy since they instill fear and pity. The play one thousand and one nights takes place in the Middle Eastern and South Asian while the pal Othello takes place in Turkey and Venice. The geographical location has a significant impact on the content of this stories. In my opinion, the place of Othello tells about the war between Turkey and Venice in the late sixteenth century. On the other hand, the thousand and one story shows how kings in the middle eastern and South Asia abused their powers. In both stories, the social, political, economic and cultural values of the time are portrayed in the story. For the need for power is shown by Iago’s character who is determined to get even with Cassio and Othello for taking away his position regardless of who gets hurt in the process. Both plays present human life in a unique way. Both plays show Jealousy and how it ruins a human life. I believe that the play Othello has modern day relevance. This importance gets shown by its major themes that are racism, manipulation, jealousy, reputation and honor, and justice. Also, the thousand and one nights has modern day relevance shown by the feminism of Shahrazad, religion and the corruption of power. Just like Shahrazad advocated for the equality between men and women, women in the modern society are actively fighting for equality between them and men. On the other hand, the people today are still fighting against racism. I think that the ICC is a symbol of justice today. Leaders who insight violence in their country gets prosecuted at the ICC. After I had analyzed the two plays, I came to a conclusion that both plays follow Aristotelian connotations. In both the plays, Othello and Shahrayar are meaningless villains. Both plays have a moral lesson to the modern society. References Read More