William Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moor of Venice as a tragedy

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Discuss William Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moor of Venice as a tragedy. As defined by Aristotle, is it correct to label Othello a “tragic hero” and to classify the play as an Aristotelian tragedy? Review pp. 1250–1254 and 1257–1258 in the Perrine’s Literaturetextbook for the background and overview of Aristotle’s concept of tragedy/the tragic hero and drama. Then, re-read Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moor of Venice; you mayreview additional audio-visual resources on the play as well.

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Believed to have been written in approximately 1603,is The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, and based on the Italian short story Un Capitano Moro (“A Moorish Captain”) by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565. The work revolves around four central characters: Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army; his new wife, Desdemona; his lieutenant, Cassio; and his trusted ensign, Iago. Because of its varied and current themes of racism, love, jealousy and betrayal, Othello is still often performed in professional and community theatres alike and has been the basis for numerous operatic, film and literary adaptations.

nough to convince him the dreams were real, the humans who are pulled into the Matrix have no idea that their sensations are false, created artificially instead of arising from actual experiences. They are both plagued by a dream state reality. For Neo, it was controlled by a super computer and for Descartes by his perception of evil demons. But in both the cases, their current sense cannot be trusted. Descartes stated, “perceive so clearly that there exist no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished from sleep”. This statement matches with what Neo felt since he could not differentiate between dream and reality. There is a point where he asks Morpheus if what he’s dreaming is the same as the reality he is living in. The major contrast is that Neo was ultimately able to find his true reality where as desecrates was never able to find it, as he began to question his own reason.

In the end, all of these stories makes us doubt the world we know. Are we actually aware of the world or it’s a false reality that we have been thrown into? The text tells us that there is a possibility that we are seeing things from a general eye and makes us question our existence. The movie is a practical implementation of the text where a fellow human has the same question in mind and he goes all the way to find out the answer(which he does).

I am not sure if we are ready to face an alternate reality because I believe that the reality I perceive is true. I do hold on to my belief but I won’t be able to put them into reason other than “I know it’s true”. A question I am left with after going through the text and the movie is that “do we really know our world”. I hope just like Neo, someday I would be able to answer it!

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