William Shakespeare's Othello - Essay Example

According to Aristotle, "pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune" (Poetics XIII, 2) that befalls the tragic hero. Two of the greatest tragic heroes are Oedipus, created by Sophocles, and Othello, created by Shakespeare thousands of years later, are the subject of our examination, and they both do arouse pity. Whether either of their misfortunes was unmerited can be debated for hours on end, but we definitely know that the misfortunes were caused by a certain trait in their characters, a sort of "uncertain vision", that prevented them from seeing things as they really were, resulting in final catastrophe. But when the stories of Oedipus and Othello are examined, we see that though both had defective understanding, their lack of insight lay in different circumstances and character traits. When faced with the scourge of plague, the Chorus in Oedipus Rex reacts with trepidation and indecisiveness: "My fearful heart twists on the rack and shakes with fear./ O Delian healer, for whom we cry aloud/ in holy awe, what obligation/ will you demand from me, a thing unknown/ or now renewed with the revolving years/ Immortal voice, O child of golden Hope, speak to me"! (Sophocles,185-191) But Oedipus is decisive and brave, and decides that he would find a solution for the crisis, and takes it upon himself to solve the whole problem almost single-handedly: " I will begin again; I'll find the truth./The dead man's cause has found a true defender/In Phoebus, and in you. And I will join you/ In seeking vengeance on behalf of Thebes/And Phoebus too; indeed, I must: if I/Remove this taint, it is not for a stranger,/ But for myself:...". (Sophocles,131,137)We see here the number of times the term "I" figures in this verse, and can measure the brash self-confidence of this King. And in this blind self-belief, Oedipus places a curse on the murderer, and though he spells out very closely the possibility that it might be someone from his own household, he makes an open declaration nevertheless: "I lay this curse upon him, that the wretch/In wretchedness and misery may live./And more: if with my knowledge he be found/ To share my hearth and home, then upon me/ Descend that doom that I invoke on him". (Sophocles, 248-252). He thus aggravates his future distress by laying the curse so stridently in public, not acknowledging to himself that he himself may be the murderer he is searching for. To any other person, the similarity of the old prediction about his own fate and the way this murderer is supposed to have acted, would have rung a bell. By now the situation is beyond remedy, of course, because he has unknowingly fulfilled the prophecy, and merely lacks the insight to see it. And at the moment he sees the truth, he blinds himself, quite literally. His uncertain vision lies in the fact that on one hand he heeds the voice of the Gods when they tell him about the plague, but not the one when he hears the dire prediction about himself, in his youth. One wonders what would have happened if Oedipus had not run from those he thought to be his parents, thus trying to avoid the prediction, or stayed his hand at murdering someone over a trifling dispute, or not married an older woman. In avoiding the prediction and not paying heed to it, he made it true, blind self-belief causes his uncertain vision. Shakespeare's Othello on the other hand is trusting, straight and impulsive, which causes his natural judgment to fail in his personal life. As Bradley puts it in extremely specific terms: "Othello's mind, for all its poetry, is very simple. He is not observant. His nature tends outward. He is quite free from introspection, and is not given to reflection. Emotion excites his imagination, but it confuses and dulls his intellect...... His trust, where he trusts, is absolute. Hesitation is almost impossible to him. He is extremely self-reliant, and decides and acts instantaneously. If stirred to indignation, as 'in Aleppo once,' he answers with one lightning stroke. Love, if he loves, must be to him the heaven where either he must live or bear no life. If such a passion as jealousy seizes him, it will swell into a well-nigh incontrollable flood. He will press for immediate conviction or immediate relief Convinced, he will act with the authority of a judge and the swiftness of a man in mortal pain. Undeceived, he will do like execution on himself". (Bradley, 1905 ) Moroever, we see that Othello is new to relationships with the opposite sex and inexperienced in love. He finds himself incredibly lucky to have won the favors of a beautiful woman, much younger in age on the strength of his prowess alone, which is so evident in his public displays of affection. This makes him doubly insecure of her affections, and clouds his insight, and makes him mistakenly place his blind trust in the villainous Iago, rather than the innocent Desdemona. And Iago reads Othello well: "The Moor is of a free and open nature,/That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,/And will as tenderly be led by the nose/As asses are". ( Shakespeare, I, iii, 393-96) Though a part of Oedipus retains the calm, sound judgment that he displays when dealing with disputes,"I'll see before I doubt; when I doubt prove, /And on the proof, there is no more but this- / Away at once with love or jealousy!" (Shakespeare, III, iii, 189-192), we see that his passion takes over at later instances, when he snarls ferociously, "Be sure of it. Give me the ocular proof,/ Or by the worth of mine eternal soul, Thou hadst been better have been born a dog/ Than answer my wak'd wrath!(Shakespeare, III, iii, 360-363) . It is the circumstance of inexperience in love and insecurity combined with the traits of a trusting and passionate, unreflective nature that cloud Othello's vision in a red, murderous haze. One can only conclude that the fall of both these tragic heroes lay in their lack of insight or the ability to see the truth for what it is. But while one of them falls due to an almost arrogant self-belief, the other succumbs to circumstances, and his own naive faith in the words of a villain he fails to recognize. Works Cited: Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. London: Macmillan,1905, 189-191. Bloom, H. William Shakespeare's Othello. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. Shakespeare, W. Othello, A Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton, 2004. Sophocles, Antigone ; Oedipus the King ; Electra. Edith Hall, ed., H. D. F. Kitto - transltr, - Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1994, 56. Read More