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A Postcolonialist Analysis of the Tragedy of Othello Syllabus 1. Introduction Different people have different opinions towards the tragedy of Othello. Personally, I am deeply impressed by the racial bias in this tragedy; therefore I try to analyze it from the view of postcolonialism. As you know, the tragedy of Othello has a close relation with Othello’s blackness identity. In the play, the viperous Iago makes full use of Othello’s special Moor identity, which is different from the dominant society, to enrage Desdemona’s father, Brabantio.
Then Iago also finds ways to make Othello himself more and more conscious of his blackness identity which result in his self-humiliation. Consequently, love between Othello and Desdemona is gradually damaged due to Othello’s suspicion and blind trust on Iago. Othello is the victim of cross-cultural power plays to some extent. Or, we can say that the tragedy of Othello can be classified as the paradigm of postcolonialism, and the reading of race. 2. Body 1) Brief introduction on postcolonialism As a school, postcolonialism, attempts to look at how texts translate both within and across cultures.
It desires to break apart Eurocentric conceptions “hegemonic ‘normality'” and to draw long-lost attention to the voices, societies, and histories that have silenced. That process has opened up cultural voices to a sort of cross-cultural dialogism, recovered traces of the Other in the self, the self in the Other, and emphasized the flexibility and negotiability of cultural borders. Whereas, although postcolonial critiques have begun to read difference into identity, they continue to read identity as difference, as the contested product of colonial encounters in which the West was always on top.
They continue to recreate the history of silenced voices through only one model cultural exchange: one in which European domination are both the motivating force and the inevitable outcome. 2) The inevitable racial bias towards Othello It is well known that English colonial expansion began with the colonization of Newfoundland in 1583. In Shakespeare era Britain has a tight hegemonic control over black people. Black people are treated as inferior grades, without positions in all aspects of the society, and they have been deprived of their freedom and dignity.
We can see clearly that Othello lives in the society which is dominated by the white people. He is severely discriminated by most of the people despite of his great contribution to the state. All kinds of bias that occurred to him are really unfair yet unavoidable. Being a Moor, he is naturally regarded as a horrible devil or necromancer. 3) Othello: victim of the colonial society In the period from the late sixteenth through the middle of the seventeenth century, one finds the otherness of the black persona increasingly transformed into a truth.
It is true that Othello has strived for many years to squash into the upper-class; however, the fact of being a Moor cannot be erased in any case. Though he falls in the pretty Desdemona, he dares not express his love to her because of his special identity. It is Desdemona, who gives him the hint that he can win her love. His union with Desdemona seems that he has got paid to some extent in this white society. Nevertheless, things will change as the play goes on. It is Iago who most adroitly pushes Othello towards the rediscovery of his black origins.
Iago began his revenge plan towards Othello with the distortion of Cassio’s conversation with Desdemona. Involving in Iago’s elaborate plans, Othello comes to believe that his wife does have the sex relation with Cassio. Actually, the breakdown of Othello is a collapse of certain props of assurance—the assurance of being loved and the assurance of position—-upon which his personality rests. When the props of assurance collapse, honor is a surrogate for the justice that has gone utterly wrong: in lieu of the lost “cause” it implies a code that ennobles the private lust for punitive action.
As a result, Othello decides to kill Desdemona. We can conclude that Othello’s tragedy is unavoidable. 3. Conclusion The tragedy of Othello shows unequal and uneven forces of cultural representation and it is the paradigm of postcolonialism. Othello’s Blackness is not simply a metaphor, a cultural sign or response to a specific body or soul. It is also a personal thing, an individual body or soul that creates and gives credence to the already present cultural meanings of blackness. He is the embodiment of evil, blackened by sin, driven by lust, and hungry for murder and revenge.
The poor Othello has been branded as blackness or Moor during the whole of his life which destines his mental fragility and sensitivity. The love tragedy between Othello and Desdemona is inevitable in the cruel colonial society. Works Cited: Brooke, Tucker and Mason, Lawrence, ed. The Tragedy of Othello. USA: Yale University Press, 1947. Edward, Said. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Leonard, F. Dean, ed. A Casebook on Othello. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1961. Elmer, Edgar Stoll. Art and Artifice in Shakespeare. London: Cambridge University Press, 1938. [pic]