Blog #3- Evil Iago

Before reading Othello, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what evil was. Sure... like Batman and the joker right? But I was mistakin'. Iago is the epitome of evil. Unlike the guy in the skittles commercial where everything he touches turns to skittles, it seems as though everything Iago got involved in was utterly destroyed.

Never before had I heard of a villain with such a defined chess set, where every person in the whole play was literally his pawn.

The one part of Iago's evilness that most impressed me was his rationalization to his inner self. Sure, he knew everything he was doing was evil, he referenced himself as the devil, but he would tell himself lies enough to almost make them seem true. That aspect of his persona was unlike any other villain that I had heard of before.

His being is so evil that he did all of this merely because he wasn't second in command. Out of his bitterness he murdered, both emotionally and literally, everyone in the play.

This term moral pyromaniac is so perfect for Iago that I wish I had thought of it myself. What some people might not understand is that this term would never be obtainable unless the possessor of it was that much smarter than everyone around him. Iago was the only character in the play that I knew what was going on. You had dumb ass Roderigo, who was an actual idiot, the lovestruck make-me-want-to-puke-my-brains-out Othello, and his beau, Desdemona, who was basically Othello's love slave throughout the whole play. Iago was the only character who understood how to manipulate these traits of the characters and set fire to everything.

Iago was the moral pyromaniac because he didn't even have morals to begin with. He knew he was evil, he knew he was the devil, but he kept telling himself what he wanted to hear until it sounded true. Iago showed at the end of the day, brains will always win over brawn, and that the idea of "good" is much more simple and easier to be manipulated than the cunning force of pure, hellish evil.

Blog Post #1- Quotes that I enjoy!

"Diligence is the mother of good luck."
- Benjamin Franklin


"When you win nothing hurts."
- Joe Namath













"Oh my god, a freshman!" -Larry Munson

Blog Post #2- A new sense of a happy ending

After reading Oedipus Rex, I realized that not all "happy endings" are necessarily happy. In Oedipus Rex, the end of the play consists of the queen committing suicide, Oedipus stabbing his eyes, exiling himself, and the people of Labdakos in general disbelief as of who the actual murderer of their former king was.

It seems as though most people after reading about such events as I just listed would take the pessimistic view that this ending was not only unhappy, but dead aweful. On the contrary, after discussions in class about Oedipus's fate, I realized that the ending to the play was quite the opposite of aweful.

Maybe the events weren't exactly what the reader would want to happen, but the fact is that they HAD to happen. You can't escape your fate, and that is what this play is trying to tell us. I felt bad for Oedipus at the end of the play, but this was because his fate was determined for him before he could even walk. However, I understand now that although it is his fate, he is still in control of it. Basically, he still possesses free-will within his fate.

With Oedipus in exile, the great plague in Labdakos would be lifted and the people would once again be able to live happily. Sure, some crazy stuff had to happen to make that possible, but that's a pretty happy ending to me.




"Oh my God, a freshman!" -Larry Munson