OTHELLO PAPER ASSIGNMENT:

In the last scene of Shakespeare's Othello, Desdemona and Othello lie on their marriage bed, embracing in death. Voicing the shock and horror that numbers of readers and audiences must have felt at this moment, Samuel Johnson exclaimed: "It is not to be endured." But endure it we must.

One way to endure it may be to understand its causes by asking and attempting to answer this question:

Why did this dreadful thing happen? How was a sensitive, loving husband such as Othello brought to murder, to smother, his gentle Desdemona?

In writing your paper in answer to this question (2-3 double-spaced pages), you might consider the following:

Exactly what part did Iago play in the outcome? How was he able to so successfully convince Othello, without a shred of real evidence, that his wife had committed adultery?

What part did Othello play in the outcome? For all his grandiloquence and heroism, was he perhaps a little blinded by his own ego to his wife's virtues and Iago's machinations? Did his position as outsider in Venice cause him to rely too much on his "honest Iago"? Did this condition lead him to be a little too naive, too gullible?

Is there any sense in which Othello's strengths as a general are weaknesses in other situations?

What part did Emilia and Desdemona play in the tragedy? What was the effect of Emilia's not admitting to her mistress that she had given her husband the lost handkerchief? Did Desdemona plead a little too strongly for Cassio's reinstatement?

For that matter, what part did larger tendencies play: What about the prejudice toward Venetian women? What about the implicit racism in the play? What about the fact that the worlds of men and women seem so separate and in some ways opposed in the play? What about the pressures of a male society that seems to value valor, honor, and competitiveness over human relationships? And could it be true that the destructive forces that Iago unleashes are implicit in any strong love relationship?