This week we talked about Othello and discussed it in class. Before that, we took our last quiz on Daoism and I was really surprised. The question that asked "of the four quotes, which one didn't come from our text" and I guessed. It turns out my guess was wrong and the quote I thought was from the Daoist text actually came from the bible. I was really amazed by that and understood that no matter what belief or philosophy one follows, it's all pretty much the same.
With the story of Othello, I have to honest I'm not a complete fan of Shakespeare. I mean I do like the stories. I believe the stories are magnificent. The problem is I can't understand what he's writing. To me, it seems its all unnecessary jargon that could be summarized in very few pages. Having said that, reading Othello was not an easy task. I had to find a helpful translator to summarize each sentence in the play. From what I read, Othello is a general for Venice and he's from North Africa. This guy Iago hates Othello for many reasons. The real reason? I don't know, but we do know Iago hates Othello a lot. So throughout the play, Iago lies and plots to get back at Othello while at the same time trying to benefit himself like stealing money.
As the story goes on, you learn that Iago tries to make it look like Othello's wife Desdemona was cheating on him with Cassio, Othello's first lieutenant. I actually read ahead and found out
*SPOILER*
Othello kills Desdemona by smothering her with a pillow, then once he finds out she was actually faithful, he kills himself.
So that's how the great tragedy ends. Now Othello is not really a hero in this play, or anyone for that matter. Rather, this story doesn't have a hero like in Oedipus Wrex or Daoism. Instead this story has a great villain, Iago. This guy did so much evil just to get what he wanted. He lied to almost everyone, made things look like they were something else, and made sure he got what he wanted. Tying it back to comic books, Iago reminds me of the Joker. Not the Joker from the comics, but from the movie The Dark Knight with Christian Bale and Heath Ledger.
In the movie, we don't know who the Joker is or why he's doing these bad things. All we know is that he likes to create chaos and will kill anyone who gets in his way. Iago reminds me of the Joker because we don't have a clear reason why he wants to kill Othello (even though it just might be because Othello passed the job of lieutenant to Cassio) but we do know that he would do anything, including getting his wife involved and having people die in order to get what he wants.
WC: 487
Saying that the play could just be summarized belies the value of the language, don't you think? How many stories do we read--or better yet, songs do we listen to--where we celebrate the beauty of the way the speaker talks about things. Even in the Matrix, that speech about the spoon, and Morpheus' speech in the training room are thought provoking in part because they don't just say, "Dude, you live in a computer program and you're a power source for squid machines. If you can just stop being stupid, you'll have superpowers because you can manipulate the code of the matrix." Sometimes you just gotta enjoy the sounds of the speech.
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