BECOMING AS GODS: The Murder of Desdemona by Othello, Abortion and Communion in the Hand

An article by Hilary White. We were 'Evil Trads' together over a decade ago. She continued writing and I took a long break. She's still blogging as well as writing for The Remnant, and other outlets. Both 'Orwell's Picnic' and 'Whats Up With Francis Church' (links in the sidebar) are her blogs, the first a personal, literary, artistic sort of journal, and the second exactly what its name implies.

From The Remnant

“Divinity of hell! When devils will the blackest sins put on, they do suggest at first with heavenly shows.”

Iago, Othello, Desdemona and the Father of Lies

English literature provides many studies of human evil, but perhaps the most poignant and appalling of all is Iago, Shakespeare’s villain of the Tragedy of Othello. Iago provides us with an examination of St. Thomas Aquinas’s claim that lying remakes a person into the very image of the devil. Iago is held by literary historians as possibly the most purely evil character in English literature whose calculated and ruthless manipulations bring about ruin and death for all around him. And he accomplishes all this by lies and the presentation of a false front of virtue, a “heavenly show”.

Iago is the ensign of Othello, a commander of the Venetian military in the Republic’s wars against the Turks. He uses the goodness and innocence of Othello’s beloved wife, Desdemona, to destroy her together with his commander. Iago has built up a reputation for honesty and constant loyalty to Othello throughout their service together fighting the Turks at Rhodes and Cyprus. In the play he uses this trust and good reputation to insinuate himself into the commander’s inner circle, displace his immediate superior, Cassio, having him killed, and finally uses subterfuge to create the fatal suspicion between Othello and Desdemona.

And why? The question of Iago’s motives is left unclear, probably deliberately, by Shakespeare. Certainly professional jealousy is among them. The narcissistic Iago cannot stand the fact that Cassio the lieutenant is superior in rank. And he probably keenly feels the humiliation of being a European serving under the Moorish Othello’s command.

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