The Purpose of this Blog

Your task on this blog is to write a brief summary of what we learned in class today. Include enough detail so that someone who was ill or missed the lesson can catch up with what they missed. Over the course of the term, these 'class scribe' posts will grow to be a guide book for the course, written by students for students.

With each post ask yourself the following questions:
1) Is this good enough for our guide book?
2) Will your post enable someone who wasn't here to catch up?
3) Would a graphic/video/link help to illustrate what we have learned?


Sunday 14 November 2010

There is no Othello without Iago

At the beginning of the lesson the task was to think of a time when you have been tempted to do something, we had to write 1 paragraph on it and state:
-what
-who
-how
-where
-when
-end result
Then we moved onto a whether or not Iago is more of a tragic hero then Othello, what we think of this view and also is Othello even a tragic hero?.

we came to the conclusion that Iago is like the puppet master and he practically controls everyones next move with emotional blackmail and deceptive comments etc.
Iago is the one putting negativity into Othello's head and now Othello is using references to what Iago has said before, whereas he never used to for example when Othello says "forked plague" this means a husband that has been lied to, this shows that he believes in what Iago is saying about Desdemona being deceptive.
Othello shows other signs of Iago's references for example lines 179-194 of Act 3 Scene 3 Othello uses the word doubt four times this shows us that he is undermining his words and trying to convince himself what he is saying is true and this also shows that Iago's negative words are seeping its way into Othello's thoughts and the language he uses.

Iago uses many different techniques to put words into Othello's mouth like when they describe a man of colour Iago usually says something harsh and with negative imagery for example in one of the first speeches of act 3 scene 3 that Iago says he tries to slyly say to Othello that Desdemona is capable of lying and she has already done it to her dad so she would do it to him to the audience can see that Othello is swayed by this and agrees a little.
In the second speech that Iago says to Othello he lied to Desdemona's dad because he loves Othello and tries to suck up to him and in return Othello says that he is in Iago's debt,
Iago then starts saying to Othello that he has seen what its done to Othello but Othello is in denial and keeps repeating that it hasn't effected him this shows that he is trying to convince himself that what he is saying is true once again and also it shows that Iago is succeeding in getting Othello to doubt himself.

To sum it up we had to say what the quote "there is no Othello without Iago" meant to us in the light of this scene, some people came up with the conclusion that it meant that Iago controls Othello and all the actions Othello does are composed by Iago etc.

Our homework was to write about how language, structure and form effect a soliloquy, we have to use the term Lexis (speech) and...
-How is the influence over Othello shown in a soliloquy?
-use the term antithesis
-how does the form of soliloquy add to this effect?
And last but not least we have to finish reading notes for separation on Tuesdays lesson...

Arigatou Gozaimasu >.<
Iram

8 comments:

  1. Without Iago there might not even have been a tragedy as Iago could have been doing something other from manipulating Othello

    similarly without Othello then there would have been nobody to plot "revenge" against.

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  2. Without Iago, `Othello` wouldn't be a tragedy. It would all be the typical happy ending, love story.

    Chris W

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  3. Iago and Othello cannot work without one another in my opinion. Iago wouldn't have anyone clever enough to manipulate and Othello would be a boring, pointless character.

    Daniel C.

    PS: Arigatou Gozaimasu??????????????????????

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  4. good blog it`s detailed for those who weren`t in the lesson
    Tamsin

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  5. Iago enables Othello to have a meaning. Iago questions othello's thoughts, although we know Iagos real intentions when he does this BUT Iago's Qs do make sense.

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  6. I agree with the statement that there is no Othello without Iago, this is as Igao brings out Othellos character and without Iago we would never Othellos true character.

    Esmeralda ;)

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  7. But then, Othello is so ignorent that he will be swayed by others even Iago is not here.

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