What motivates Iago to carry out his schemes? Do you find him a ...

[ahriuashd]

What motivates Iago to carry out his schemes? Do you find him a devilincarnate, a madman, or a rational human being?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

In your view, does Othellos long speech in V, ii, 348366, succeed in restoring his original dignity and nobility? Do you agree with Cassio (V, ii, 372) that Othello was great of heart?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

[wfdfwc23]

Answer to Question 1

• This is of course the central issue of the play, one that has in itself inspired a small library of commentary and speculation. There are bases for each of these views: there is something devilish in Iagos zealous devotion to wickedness and amorality; there is madness in his skewed assumptions about human nature; and there is supremely rational calculation in the planning and execution of his schemes. In his Iago: Some Approaches to the Illusion of His Motivation (New York: Atheneum, 1970), the critic Stanley Edgar Hyman considers these and several other interpretations, and concludes that the most fruitful approach is a conflation of all these views, rather than an emphasis on one to the exclusion of the others.

Answer to Question 2

• Obviously, in the light of what he has done, nothing can completely succeed in restoring his original dignity and nobility, but in this speech, Othello: 1) reminds us of his previous greatness (349); asks not for special pleading on his behalf, but to be judged fairly and completely (350353); explains his fall (353356); shows his recovered understandingrecove red tragically too lateof Desdemonas worth (356358); acknowledges his profound misery and remorse (358361); and, in his reference to his encounter with the Turk in Aleppo (362366), says, in effect, that Othello at his finest never hesitated to execute rough justice on a villain, and that, demonstrating his return to his old self, he has come upon another such villain and proceeds to do likewise to this one. Until Iagos erosion of his finer self, Othello was indeed worthy of Cassios description.

[ahriuashd]

Thank you!

[wfdfwc23]

Always glad to help...