Othello

Othello

Shakespeare was a brilliant man capable of tying in social critique in the slightest of ways that one could only see if one looked very closely. Take for example Shakespeare’s play of words using black and white in the Othello. These two words become so loaded with meanings that scholars today are still discovering new ways that the two words can be interpreted. “The Rhetoric of Black and White in Othello” by Doris Alder is ten pages delving deep into the brain of Shakespeare and the things that were going through his head as he wrote Othello. She uncovers the many meanings that black and white carried. Almost always, black was a way to emphasize how something could be dirty and impure, physically, morally, or anything of the sort. Something white on the other hand was young, innocent, and pure. These surface interpretations are good evidence to support the true meaning that Shakespeare was trying to get across. Part of this deeper meaning has to do with how black can always stain white, making it dirty and foul. White, however, can never affect black to purify and make it clean. Through Shakespeare’s Othello as uncovered by “The Rhetoric of Black and White” by Doris Alder, Shakespeare attempts to show the helplessness of Othello in his seemingly trapped soul inside his black body. Despite what’s on his skin, everything inside is righteous and white, only to be corrupted black by the fair skinned Iago. While those morally dirty and black can be witnessed several times into corrupting the white and righteous, those living

white righteous lives never seem to have an effect on those consumed by blackness.

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Through this, Shakespeare shows the struggle between good and evil in which evil prevails.

In “The Rhetoic of Black and White”, all evidence in the article in some way attempts to show how black is bad. Black is described as “black and burning pit of hell” (249, Alder) when usually red is used to describe hell. Black is also continuously exchanged with the word foul as “black is used to denote the soil of dirt and grime” (249). Othello is also one time referred to as blacker than the devil. Through this evidence, one would assume that Othello is of horrible conniving nature. One would assume that he has morals that are blacker than the night. However, these words are hardly to describe Othello’s nature at all. Instead Othello begins the play as a just man. He is well-tempered, fair, and treats Desdemona with the utmost love and affection. He in no way reflects this black nature that his skin seems to reflect. Othello’s counterpart is Iago. In every way Iago is the opposite. Othello is black on the outside but seemingly white on the inside while Iago is of fair skin on the outside but whose morals are black as coal. His ability to fool everyone is due to his white colored skin which his contemporary’s cannon see past while Othello’s ability to maintain suspicion among his peers is due to his black skin. On the inside, Iago is so black and full of deceit that they are able to turn Othello’s seemingly white inside and stain it to a point where he is capable of murdering the whitest thing of all things in Othello, and that is Desdemona. Othello is trapped in his black skin while Iago is conveniently disguised in his white skin. Shakespeare uses this as irony to show how Othello was a prisoner in his own body and how Iago so easily blacked Othello’s soul because of his pure looking exterior which reflected nothing of his dirty conniving nature.

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As with Iago and Othello, Shakespeare shows repeatedly how black can stain white. Desdemona is seen as being stained by “the old black ram [Othello]” who is “tupping [Desdemona] the white ewe” in the very beginning of the story (251). Despite Othello’s white hearted nature, he is seen as defiling this fair skinned lady and is hunted down for judgment by Desdemona’s father. Doris Alder agrees that “When the audience meets the noble Moor [for the first time], his blackness has been verbally linked with ugliness, the strange and unnatural, gross animal sensuality, and the evil of the devil himself” (251). Othello’s “dirty” black exterior reflects a “dirty” black soul as far as Othello’s contemporaries are concerned and this black soul will have a staining effect on the pure Desdemona. This is the exact reason why Othello was pursued by Desdemona’s father, where if Othello were white he would have not been pursued and questioned by Desdemona’s father, because no “staining” would have occurred. This is a more physical example of black staining white but moral examples of black staining white comes through the Iago and