Sunday, July 29, 2012

In Act 1, what imagery does Iago use to describe Othello and Desdemona's elopement, and what conflict does that imagery develop?

In Othello, Iago very cleverly uses
much emotional imagery to evoke an emotional response from Desdemona's father Brabantio
regarding her elopement.   The images are as
follow:


  • Thief and Crime
    Imagery:

readability="0.15126050420168">

Awake! what, ho,
Brabantio!
thieves! thieves!
thieves!

Look to your
house,
your
daughter and your
bags!

Thieves!
thieves!



AND


readability="0.25925925925926">

'Zounds, sir,
you're
robb'd



  • Sexual,
    Religious, Animal, and Racial
    Imagery
    (combined):

readability="0.46153846153846">

for
shame, put
on

your
gown;

Your heart is
burst,
you have lost
half your soul;

Even now, now, very now,
an old black
ram

Is
topping your white ewe.
Arise,
arise;

Awake the snorting citizens with the
bell,

Or else the
devil will make a
grandsire of
you:

Arise, I
say.



AND


readability="0.14965986394558">

'Zounds, sir,
you are one of those that will
not

serve
God, if the devil bid you.
Because we come
to

do you service and you think we are ruffians,
you'll

have your daughter
covered with a Barbary horse;

you'll have
your nephews neigh to you;
you'll
have

coursers
for cousins and gennets for
germans.



This
last line translated is, "you'd have your daughter covered with a African horse; you'd
have your nephews neigh to you; you'd have chargers for cousins and small Spanish horses
for Germans."


In short, Iago synthesizes all the imagery
together (sexual, religious, animal, racial, criminal) to bombard Brabantio and inflame
his rage.  Iago wants Brabantio to start a fight with the Moor, to annul the marriage,
to prosecute and court- marshall him.  Iago knows that Brabantio is paranoid and racist
about his daughter seeing Othello, who is much older, black, and a former-Muslim.  Iago
plays upon the fears of the European male of the time: that a black man is a sexual
predator out to seduce and steal his white woman and that a black man is superior to a
white man in bed.

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