Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Sight and Blindness
When Desdemona asks to be allowed to accompany Othello
to Cyprus, she says that she “saw Othello’s visage in his mind,
/ And to his honours and his valiant parts / Did I my soul and fortunes
consecrate” (I.iii. 250–252).
Othello’s blackness, his visible difference from everyone around
him, is of little importance to Desdemona: she has the power to
see him for what he is in a way that even Othello himself cannot.
Desdemona’s line is one of many references to different kinds of
sight in the play. Earlier in Act I, scene iii, a senator suggests
that the Turkish retreat to Rhodes is “a pageant / To keep us in
false gaze” (I.iii.19–20). The beginning
of Act II consists entirely of people staring out to sea, waiting
to see the arrival of ships, friendly or otherwise. Othello, though
he demands “ocular proof” (III.iii.365),
is frequently convinced by things he does not see: he strips Cassio
of his position as lieutenant based on the story Iago tells; he
relies on Iago’s story of seeing Cassio wipe his beard with Desdemona’s
handkerchief (III.iii.437–440); and he believes
Cassio to be dead simply because he hears him scream. After Othello
has killed himself in the final scene, Lodovico says to Iago, “Look
on the tragic loading of this bed. / This is thy work. The object
poisons sight. / Let it be hid” (V.ii.373–375).
The action of the play depends heavily on characters not seeing
things: Othello accuses his wife although he never sees her infidelity,
and Emilia, although she watches Othello erupt into a rage about
the missing handkerchief, does not figuratively “see” what her husband
has done.
Plants
Iago is strangely preoccupied with plants. His speeches
to Roderigo in particular make extensive and elaborate use of vegetable
metaphors and conceits. Some examples are: “Our bodies are our gardens,
to which our wills are gardeners; so that if we will plant nettles or
sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme . . . the power and corrigible
authority of this lies in our wills” (I.iii.317–322);
“Though other things grow fair against the sun, / Yet fruits that
blossom first will first be ripe” (II.iii.349–350);
“And then, sir, would he gripe and wring my hand, / Cry ‘O sweet
creature!’, then kiss me hard, / As if he plucked kisses up by the
roots, / That grew upon my lips” (III.iii.425–428).
The first of these examples best explains Iago’s preoccupation with
the plant metaphor and how it functions within the play. Characters
in this play seem to be the product of certain inevitable, natural
forces, which, if left unchecked, will grow wild. Iago understands
these natural forces particularly well: he is, according to his
own metaphor, a good “gardener,” both of himself and of others.
Many of Iago’s botanical references concern poison: “I’ll pour this
pestilence into his ear” (II.iii.330); “The
Moor already changes with my poison. / Dangerous conceits are in
their natures poisons, / . . . / . . . Not poppy nor mandragora
/ Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world / Shall ever medicine thee
to that sweet sleep” (III.iii.329–336).
Iago cultivates his “conceits” so that they become lethal poisons
and then plants their seeds in the minds of others. The organic
way in which Iago’s plots consume the other characters and determine
their behavior makes his conniving, human evil seem like a force
of nature. That organic growth also indicates that the minds of
the other characters are fertile ground for Iago’s efforts.
Animals
Iago calls Othello a “Barbary horse,” an “old black ram,”
and also tells Brabanzio that his daughter and Othello are “making
the beast with two backs” (I.i.117–118).
In Act I, scene iii, Iago tells Roderigo, “Ere I would say I would
drown myself for the love of a guinea-hen, I would change my humanity
with a baboon” (I.iii.312–313). He then remarks
that drowning is for “cats and blind puppies” (I.iii.330–331).
Cassio laments that, when drunk, he is “by and by a fool, and presently
a beast!” (II.iii.284–285). Othello tells
Iago, “Exchange me for a goat / When I shall turn the business of
my soul / To such exsufflicate and blowed surmises” (III.iii.184–186).
He later says that “[a] horned man’s a monster and a beast” (IV.i.59).
Even Emilia, in the final scene, says that she will “play the swan,
/ And die in music” (V.ii.254–255). Like
the repeated references to plants, these references to animals convey
a sense that the laws of nature, rather than those of society, are
the primary forces governing the characters in this play. When animal
references are used with regard to Othello, as they frequently are,
they reflect the racism both of characters in the play and of Shakespeare’s contemporary
audience. “Barbary horse” is a vulgarity particularly appropriate
in the mouth of Iago, but even without having seen Othello, the
Jacobean audience would have known from Iago’s metaphor that he
meant to connote a savage Moor.
Hell, Demons, and Monsters
Iago tells Othello to beware of jealousy, the “green-eyed
monster which doth mock/ The meat it feeds on” (III.iii.170–171).
Likewise, Emilia describes jealousy as dangerously and uncannily
self-generating, a “monster / Begot upon itself, born on itself”
(III.iv.156–157). Imagery of hell and damnation
also recurs throughout Othello, especially toward the end of the
play, when Othello becomes preoccupied with the religious and moral
judgment of Desdemona and himself. After he has learned the truth
about Iago, Othello calls Iago a devil and a demon several times
in Act V, scene ii. Othello’s earlier allusion to “some monster
in [his] thought” ironically refers to Iago (III.iii.111).
Likewise, his vision of Desdemona’s betrayal is “monstrous, monstrous!”
(III.iii.431). Shortly before he kills himself,
Othello wishes for eternal spiritual and physical torture in hell, crying
out, “Whip me, ye devils, / . . . / . . . roast me in sulphur, /
Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!” (V.ii.284–287).
The imagery of the monstrous and diabolical takes over where the
imagery of animals can go no further, presenting the jealousy-crazed
characters not simply as brutish, but as grotesque, deformed, and
demonic.
