Othello response

Due Friday, March 30, one page single-spaced on one of the following two options:

Option 1: In Act 4, scene 2 (pp. 94-7), Othello confronts Desdemona. If you believe she could have prevented her death by being more forthright with Othello, write a dialogue that you think might have worked. What might she have said, that she didn’t say in this scene?

Option 2: So much has been said about Iago’s motives. Most readers sympathize about being passed over for promotion in act 1, but then it gets more complicated with his soliloquy at the end of act 1. Why does he continue with his plots after he becomes a lieutenant (p.74)? Are his motives what he says they are, or something else? A distorted love for Othello that causes jealousy over his bond with Cassio? Is it the “buzz” he gets by improvising theater, which he is so good at? How much should we weigh his comments in 5.1.19-20 that Cassio’s “daily beauty in his life” makes him seem “ugly”? Is it “Motiveless malignity” or just plain unexplained evil for no reason? Think hard, come up with an insight, and tie your theory into specific actions and lines of the text.