Out of all of the characters that we’ve seen in Othello so far, one of them sticks out like a sore thumb. This character seems to have the majority of the important lines, and lets his evil intentions be known to the audience while putting on an elaborate charade to his peers. This character, of course, is Iago. Iago is the vile mastermind behind the tragedy Othello. He is the exploiter of Othello’s tragic flaw, and without Iago Othello might not be a tragedy at all. Iago is a very jealous man, and he believes that Othello slept with his wife. So, like a true psychopath, he manipulates every person he meets to try and exact his revenge on Othello. The following excerpt in which Iago speaks to Roderigo is a perfect characterization:
“Were I the Moor I would not be Iago.
In following him I follow but myself;
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so for my peculiar end.
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern, ’tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at. I am not what I am.”
Iago is saying in his own cryptic way that he does not follow Othello because Othello is his superior; he follows him because he wishes to harm or destroy him. He goes on to say that what he appears to want or do does not indicate his true motives. This is ironic, because even then he manipulates Roderigo.
In conclusion, Iago is arguably the most despicable character in any play ever, due to his bad attitude, love for manipulation, use of racist slang, and sexist comments.
The wave of social change travels on a tide of struggle, pain, artistry, and blood. The ebb and flow of taboo and oppression are difficult summits to surmount, and often times take several decades to overcome. This excruciatingly slow rate of change is the cause of much frustration to those who are being oppressed, which is exemplified in many of Langston Hughes’s poems. One poem in particular, entitled “My People”, takes this negative energy and turns it into a positive, empowering poem demonstrating that although African Americans of that time were stuck with low class jobs and rarely acknowledged socially, they keep on living and enjoying their lives with passion. As with many of Hughes’s pieces, this work doesn’t have a rhyme scheme or set structure, instead relying on a strong and distinct cadence to ingrain itself in the reader’s mind.
While reading this poem, it seems as if one can hear Hughes himself speaking. The layout and punctuation of this piece allows the reader to speed up and slow down as they choose, giving it a very natural, spoken-word or song-like feel. Though some may argue that the majority of the poem is bland, simply listing the many occupations of Hughes’s people, this is certainly not the case. The emotional impact lies in the rhythm and pattern of speech, letting the words flow off of the page and into the reader’s soul. Hughes also employs repetition in this piece, to a certain extent. The phrase “Loud laughers in the hands of Fate” is repeated near the beginning and at the very end of the poem. This phrase, along with “Dream singers,/Story-tellers,…/Dancers and laughers” are some of the most important parts of this piece. They completely set the tone and mood of the poem, making it positive and empowering. Despite the hardships and tribulations that his people are forced to undergo, they still sing, dance, and laugh in the hands of fate.
Of the multitude of emotions possessed by humans, the fear of madness caused by complete isolation is perhaps the most gut wrenching. “I Felt a Funeral” by Emily Dickinson captures this terrible prospect in a very realistic way. The fact that Dickinson herself spent most of her life cooped up and alone just adds to the depth of this poem’s impact. The opening line, “I felt a funeral in my brain”, sets the stage for a descent into a dark, foreboding insanity. Dickinson describes her own fall into madness by using an extended metaphor for a funeral, in which her own thoughts are holding a silent service for her mind and sending her to the grave.
Within the poem, Dickinson’s diction follows a trend of using gloomy descriptions and utilizes the repetition of verbs with dark connotations. The overall emotional effect evoked by this language makes the reader feel as if they themselves are within Dickinson’s mental coffin, slowly being lowered into the dank and musty ground. The pacing of the descent is at first slow, with Dickinson becoming aware of the intense solitude that she has placed herself in. As the poem proceeds, this descent picks ups momentum, with more passive verbs like “treading, treading”, being replaced by aggressive, insistent verbs like “beating, beating”. With this change in momentum comes an impending sense of panic and urgency, starting at the back of the mind and working its way up until it bursts forward with a climatic line, “And then a Plank in Reason broke/ And it dropped down and down-“. The poem ends soon after. This change of pace first draws the reader in, then suddenly snaps them down into the darkness that Dickinson so uncannily conveys.
Even though Dickinson did a very good job of setting up the atmosphere, it almost felt like she did too good of a job. The lonely, gloomy, self-pitying overtones conveyed by this poem were a bit much, and made it feel a bit dull and slow.
While reading through John Donne’s poetry, I found all of them to be somewhat difficult to interpret. I would think that I had the meaning down, but then he’d throw in some crazy archaic phrase that I couldn’t tell forwards from backwards. Anyway, I found “Death Be Not Proud” to be one of the easiest to interpret.
First, I want to get the overall meaning out of the way. At first, I thought Donne was insulting all of the people who saw death as the ultimate tool for their gain. The first three lines,
“Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow”
seem to say that death isn’t something to take pride in. Those who think death is powerful and terrible and something to be proud of are the ones who will die first. I didn’t realize until later that the thought didn’t end with “overthrow”, but continued into the next line. When it is read as “For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me”, Donne basically says “those who you think you kill don’t die, and you can’t kill me”. At this point, I was starting to see that Donne wrote this poem as a goad to death. He compares death to a short sleep caused by opium or charms, claiming that at the end, we will awaken. Donne making reference to an afterlife, one in which he would live forever and “death..shalt die”.
Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean-Well Lighted Place” was a very interesting short story. Through the descriptions of scenery and dialogue between characters Hemingway paints a portrait of light and dark, both literally and figuratively. The majority of the story focuses on two waiters discussing and critiquing an old deaf man, their last customer of the night. While one is anxious to get home and somewhat inconsiderate towards the old man, the other waiter seems to relate to him. In this sense, the older characters seem to be more similar to each other than the two waiters were.
The first waiter is a younger man, eager to get off work and return to his wife. The second waiter is somewhat older, and in no hurry to return home to his empty bed. The perspective and thoughts of the second waiter make up much of the story. While discussing the old man, the second waiter states the importance of a “clean, well-lighted place” for one to spend time in at night, as if he were taking up for the old man’s choice to stay at the café. Then, shortly after, he recites in his mind various phrases, including biblical verses, and substitutes many import words with “nada”, or nothing. The overall effect of this episode is pretty dark and bleak. It shows that the second waiter is most likely lonely, like the old man. The recitation of the word “nothing” and the unsatisfactory light with which he discusses darker places, like bars, also suggests that he deals with a sense of emptiness and despair. Through the older waiter and old man, Hemingway conveys the feeling that the world can be a vast, empty oblivion, with only small islands of light offering reprieve, though some are not aware of it, as the second waiter says. Overall, though this story was bleak, I enjoyed it very much.
In “The Storm”, by Kate Chopin, setting heavily impacts the story’s plot. Taking place in a small Louisiana town, the story follows the exploits of a small family during a fierce thunder storm. The husband and 4 year old child are stuck at the general store, and must wait out the destructive weather before returning home. The wife, on the other hand, is home alone until she is visited by a former lover. Naturally, the storm forces them inside, allowing for more intimate interaction and eventually rekindling their old desires. The majority of the story is devoted to the wife, Calixta’s, story of rediscovering an old lover. This is where the importance of setting comes in. Due to the fact that the family lives outside of a small town and must travel a reasonable distance to obtain goods from the store, the storm was able to separate Calixta from her husband and son, allowing the adulterous events to occur. If it weren’t for the storm, her husband and son could have returned at any moment, which would have severely altered the story’s course of events. Additionally, the storm is what drew together Calixta and her lover in the first place, as illustrated in this quote: “He expressed an intention to remain outside, but it was soon apparent that he might as well have been out in the open: the water beat in upon the boards in driving sheets, and he went inside, closing the door after him”.
This story also shows how events that we are unable to control can lead to unexpected consequences, both good and bad. At one point in the story, it is mentioned that even Bibi, the child, could see that the storm was going to be large due to the stillness of the air. Although the storm was no surprise, the events that occurred during it were unforeseen and happened unbeknownst to anyone but Calixta and the man. Additionally, Calixta’s husband thinks she will be dismayed at the muddy and disheveled state that he and Bibi would come back from the store in. Instead, she seems thrilled to have them back and welcomes them both home very lovingly. Although the adulterous events that Calixta engaged in may have been morally wrong, the situations leading up to it were unavoidable due to the setting, and overall, all of the characters seem happier than they would have been if Calixta and her lover hadn’t had sex.
Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart is a very eerie and disturbing short story that explores the dark depths of madness in the human psyche. The narrator, a plotting and murderous man who is, in his own words, not mad, conceives the idea of killing an old man who lives in a room close to his. Throughout the course of the story, the younger man undergoes significant mood shifts ranging from cold, emotionless calculation to furious rage and a maniacal sense of happiness.
Although the narrator insists that he is not mad, it is painstakingly clear that the exact opposite is the case. A strong indication of this madness is the fact that he constantly denies any sort of insanity and uses examples of his “wit” and “cunning” to try and convince the reader, as if they would cancel out any allegations of madness. Another element of the narrator’s story that screams “crazy” is the reason he wants to kill the older man. He is so unsettled by the older man’s eye that he feels he must look in on the old man while he sleeps every night for a week while devising a murderous plan and fantasizing about killing him. For one small detail about a person to cause so much rage in the narrator, something must be wrong in his head.
A final detail that points towards the narrator’s madness is the fact that he says he experienced a “heightening of the senses”. He knew something had changed inside of him, but instead of being worried or skeptical, he embraced the madness as if it were a gift. While he relishes in the act of killing and dismembering the helpless old man and experiences auditory hallucinations, he believes he is perfectly sane and functional. In reality, all signs point to the madness of this creepy, obsessed individual.
Though I didn’t really know what to expect from our first short story, I was definitely caught off guard by this one. This outrageously detailed narrative about a not so ordinary day in the very ordinary life of a small market’s checkout boy paints a specific picture in the mind of the reader. From the borderline obsessive way he analyzes every feature of the three scantily clothed young women who happen upon the small store to the odd observations of town life and strange analogies he uses to describe his store, Sammy the checkout boy comes across as a very thoughtful and pretty strange individual.
One of the most bizarre moments of the story was Sammy’s daydream of “Queenie’s” home life after he heard her speak. The fact he could derive a whole scenario of fancy drinks and fancier parties just from the pronunciation of a few syllables means that his mind is fantastical at the very least. It’s obvious that he was captivated by the sudden appearance of these beach beauties. Though I will admit that stunning women can seem to make the world stop for a few moments from the perspective of a teenage boy, Sammy was enthralled to the point of intoxication, which is never healthy. In fact, he made a pretty poor decision based on the infatuation drawn out by these unwitting sirens. Being a teenage male myself, I can understand how he may not have had a very clear head when he quit his job. But I don’t ever see myself doing the same for a bikini wearing chick who I’ve never met, no matter how pretty she was.
English 1102 