Iago, like Richard III, is fun to watch because he tells us how he is going to take the place apart, and then we watch him do it. Then we get to watch as destruction falls out of his control.
I don’t think Iago is a cipher, though. He is upset, iirc because this interloper is getting the respect and the prestige that he thinks he ought to be entitled to, and thinks the interloper doesn’t deserve, so he is going to show everyone he is right by taking Othello down.
Shylock is someone about whom we can feel both sympathy (because of the society that rejects and abuses him) and horror (because he chooses to take a piece out of a virtuous and worthy person).
The “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech is very clever because it has us reacting with both sympathy and horror at once. He has just found out his daughter has eloped with a friend of Antonio (who owes him that pound of flesh), under conditions that suggest Antionio could be complicit. Having just railed against Antonio’s hatred of him for being a Jew, he argues that he is just as human as the Christians he is talking to and finishes by saying, “And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that….The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”
Sauron works without having a great deal of characterization because he is a mythic evil; and, in JRRT’s canon, the last one. Mythic evil we can point at and say, “I’m not with him, so I must be on the good guy’s side.” Then JRRT messes with us, and shows the world is changing, by making Good weak, divided, and not reliably good; not mythically and absolutely good. In a human, mundane world, you don’t get to assume you are one of the good guys just because you are not with the bad guys.
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Date: 2003-08-26 12:59 am (UTC)Iago, like Richard III, is fun to watch because he tells us how he is going to take the place apart, and then we watch him do it. Then we get to watch as destruction falls out of his control.
I don’t think Iago is a cipher, though. He is upset, iirc because this interloper is getting the respect and the prestige that he thinks he ought to be entitled to, and thinks the interloper doesn’t deserve, so he is going to show everyone he is right by taking Othello down.
Shylock is someone about whom we can feel both sympathy (because of the society that rejects and abuses him) and horror (because he chooses to take a piece out of a virtuous and worthy person).
The “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech is very clever because it has us reacting with both sympathy and horror at once. He has just found out his daughter has eloped with a friend of Antonio (who owes him that pound of flesh), under conditions that suggest Antionio could be complicit. Having just railed against Antonio’s hatred of him for being a Jew, he argues that he is just as human as the Christians he is talking to and finishes by saying, “And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that….The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”
Sauron works without having a great deal of characterization because he is a mythic evil; and, in JRRT’s canon, the last one. Mythic evil we can point at and say, “I’m not with him, so I must be on the good guy’s side.” Then JRRT messes with us, and shows the world is changing, by making Good weak, divided, and not reliably good; not mythically and absolutely good. In a human, mundane world, you don’t get to assume you are one of the good guys just because you are not with the bad guys.
Leshii