'Othello is more about the absurdity of jealousy than its destructive power' To what extent do you agree with this view?
This question is apart of a past paper for A-level English Literature B Paper 1 Specimen paper/sample paper from 2015. It is in Section B where a student chooses between two ...
'Othello is more about the absurdity of
jealousy than its destructive power' To what
extent do you agree with this view?
Arguably, Othello is more about the destructive powers of jealousy than its
absurdity. Shakespeare uses a motif of a monster to highlight the
destructive nature of jealousy. In Act 3 Scene 4, Iago warns Othello to
‘beware of the green-eyed monster’. This warning simply is to converge
Othello into giving into jealousy and succumb to his ‘medicine’ (Act 3
Scene 4). The idea of jealousy as a monster is first introduced in the
exposition, when Iago describes the ‘monstrous birth’ that he hopes to
bring about, via his soliloquy, the jealousy that Iago wants Othello to
obtain in the rest of the play. The connotation of monster is that it will
destroy anything in its path to be able to get its prey, as “the monster
always infects with monstrosity everything that it touches” (Lowenthal,
2002). The idea that jealousy is a monster continues throughout the play
as it is ‘a monster/Begot upon itself, born of itself’ (A3 S4). With this, we
can see that not only Iago believes in the destructive power of jealousy
but also Emilia. Women in Venetian society are accustomed to jealousy
due to the myth of the cuckold. Venetian men are presented as paranoid
and suspicious, and these feelings destroy their relationships with their
wives. Emilia has experienced jealousy through Iago who uses his own
jealous nature to feed into his machinations for Othello’s downfall. He is
aware of the destructive power that he is willing to transform Othello into
a creature that embodies jealousy, something similar to himself. As
Othello experiences his ‘monstrous birth’, jealousy ‘mocks the meat that it
feeds on’ (Act 3 Scene 4) and causes Othello to wish to ‘tear her to pieces’
(A4 S1). The animalistic imagery of ‘tear’ presents Othello in a negative
light, the once eloquent Othello has succumbed to jealousy and now
helpless as the destructive monster feeds on his insecurities, transforming
Othello into a monster himself.
Equally, Shakespeare presents the play ‘Othello’ to still embedded the
destructive power jealousy over the absurdity of it through Iago’s
malevolent machinations. In the exposition, it is blatant that Iago despises
Othello due to his language regarding his superior. One of his reasons to
dislike his is that Othello has ‘been twix’t my sheets/He has done my
office’ (Act 1 Scene 1). To an Elizabethan audience, this is a perfectly
reasonable response to wanting to receive revenge for Othello’s doing. He
has allegedly been cuckolded, besmirching his reputation in society and
debasing him into being nothing. In society, they would have believed he
grew horns to show he has been cuckolded by Othello, giving him more
alignment with the devil as ‘I am not what I am’ (Act 1 Scene 1). Likewise,
he has reason to be jealous as ‘three great ones of the City’ (Act 1 Scene
1) have vouched for him to be Lieutenant but instead ‘the Moor’ gave it to
an ‘arithmetician’- Cassio. This mockery would have also driven anyone to
get revenge and dislike ‘the Moor’. He feels like his reputation has been
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