Tragedy


Othello


thou Othello, thou wert once so good, / Fallen in the practice of a damned slave.’ Othello has now succumbed to his own tragic flaw, his excessive pride and overly passionate nature.


The Hero Achieves Tragic Recognition Through his suffering Othello grows in wisdom in his final moments. He recognises his own flawed humanity and berates himself for his gullibility: ‘O fool! Fool! Fool!’ Othello comes to recognise the emptiness of his former pride, seeing his military triumphs as merely a ‘vain boast’. He accepts the futility of resisting fate (‘Who can control fate?’) as he prepares himself for death. Othello sees that he was a ‘fool’ to become a slave to his passions and for arrogantly appointing himself an agent of ‘justice’. This growth in wisdom allows Othello to regain some of his former composure and nobility


as he asks for his life to be reported faithfully: ‘Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, / Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak / Of one that loved not wisely, but too well’ (Act 5, Sc 2). This begs the question what did Othello love ‘too well’? Desdemona? His reputation as a military leader? His image of himself as hero? It is arguably Othello’s pride in himself as a man, a soldier, a husband and agent of justice that he ‘loved . . . too well’. And it is this pride that became his undoing.


The Play Inspires Pity and Fear


It is vital in a tragedy that the audience feels pity for the tragic hero. Pity helps to create the feeling of loss at the end of the play.


Despite the horror of Desdemona’s death, Othello still retains the audience’s pity. Our condemnation is reserved for Iago. Othello’s loving nature and innate nobility mean that the audience are already well disposed towards him. The loss of everything that he valued so highly (his reputation as a soldier, his honour and his loving wife) evokes our sympathy. We see Othello as a man who succumbed to his own tragic flaw. His excessive pride and overly passionate nature conspired to ruin him. Although we cannot forgive him for murdering Desdemona, we pity Othello for his flawed humanity and understand him as a man put upon by a most devious villain. Othello’s suffering and torturous guilt also encourage our pity. The vision of his wretched and


enfeebled final state is deeply moving (see Tragic Reversal above). Because of the pity that Othello inspires, his eventual death creates a sense of tragic loss. At the end of Othello, the audience also experiences fear for themselves. The character of


Othello illustrates how a good man can easily turn astray. If a figure with such innate goodness and capable of such greatness as Othello can be destroyed by his own flawed humanity, then anybody can potentially be undone. This disquieting idea excites fear in the audience and serves as a moral warning.


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