Leavis- Character of Othello

othellos self dramatisation

• Leavis refuses to believe in Othellos essential dignity and instead focusses on his habit to self dramatisise

• he has not learnt from his suffering and he does not really examine himself

• he still dies acting a part and relishing his own performance

othellos anagnorisis

• when othello discovers his mistake that ultimately resulted in desdemonas death, his reaction is extremeley intensified from the usual ‘i could kick myself’

• he says ‘whip me ye devils!’ ‘roast me in sulfur’ ‘blow me about in winds’

• despite this discovery, he remains the same othello and there is no tragic self discovery

• his speech closes with the lines ‘behold, i have a weapon’

• this is a common self - dramatisizing trick

• he is now seen as pathtic and views his own self as pathetic too ‘where shall othello go?’

othellos lack of change

• although othello is ruined, he is the same othello who causes the tragedy to happen

• the targedy doesnt involve the idea of the hero learning from their suffering

• the afct that othello tends to sentimentalize should reverse the audiences sympathy towards him

• othellos simple nature is full of comlexeity - in total effect, the simplicity is total and grand

• the quiet beginning gives us a man of action with his habit of effortless authority ‘i have done the state some service’ ‘speak of me as iam, nothing extenuate’

• othello is undoubtley a stoic captain whos few words know their full suffiency - up to this point we cant say he self dramatisizes himself, he simply is

• in a marvellous way, the emotion works itself up where he says ‘one that loved not wisely but too well’

description becomes self-dramatisization

• with a rising emotional swell, description becomes unmistakably self dramatiiation - self dramatisation as un-self-comprehending as before - ‘ like the base indian , threw a pearl away, richer than all his tribe’

• comtemplating th spectacle of himslef, othello is overcome with the pathos of it - but this is not the part to die in ; drawing himself up proudly, he speaks his last words as the stern fighting man who has done the state some service ‘ in aleppo once , where a malignnat and turban’d turk beat a venetian and traduced the state, i took by the throat the circumcised dog and smoke him thus’ - this is a supers coup de theatre ( sudden dramamtic turn of events)

coup de theatre (dramatic turn of events)

• a coup de theatre is a peculiarly right ending to the tragedy of othello

• the htme of tragedy is concentrated in it as it couldnt have been possible if othello ‘learned through suffering’

• that he shoudl die acting his ideal aprt is all in the part; the part is manifested here is its rightness and solity and the actor as inseparably the man of action

• the histrionic intent symbolically affirms the reality

• othello dies belonging to the world of action in which his true part lay