Othello: Shakespeare's Aristotelian Tragedy

The great fourth-century Greek philosopher Aristotle described a tragedy as “an imitation of an action of high importance, complete and of some amplitude: in language enhanced by distinct and varying beauties…by means of pity and fear effecting its purgation of these emotions” (qtd. in Kennedy & Gioia 856).  He may very well have been describing the epic Shakespearean drama, Othello.  William Shakespeare’s famous play concerning the downfall of a Moorish general interweaves jealousy, suspense, intrigue, murder, and suicide to create a magnificent tragedy of the highest Aristotelian order.  Aristotle prescribed three main ingredients for a tragic drama recipe: hamartia, or a tragic flaw in the tragic hero’s character that brings about his downfall; katharsis, or a purgation of the audience’s emotions so that they feel that they have learned something from the play; and anagnorisis, or the character’s revelation of some fact not previously realized (Kennedy & Gioia 856-857). Shakespeare’s protagonist Othello fulfills all of Aristotle’s requirements for a tragic hero, as Othello is a character of noble status who falls from that position of power to one of shame because of his hamartia. Moreover the plot of Othello contains a powerful katharsis through its climax and conclusion, and an anagnorisis when Othello realizes that Iago and Desdemona are not who they seemed to be.

            First of all, Shakespeare’s protagonist, the Moorish general Othello, fits Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero.  According to Kennedy and Gioia, Aristotle states that a tragic hero must have three dominant qualities: he must be a person of high estate, he must fall from that position into unhappiness, and his downfall must be brought about by his hamartia, or his tragic flaw (856-857).  Othello is not only a successful general in the Venetian army but is also well respected, admired, and well liked.  Contrary to common assumption, “high estate” does not mean that the tragic hero must be royal or even noble; it simply “gives him a place of dignity to fall from and perhaps makes his fall seem all the more a calamity” (Kennedy & Gioia 856).  Since Othello enjoys a position of power and happiness at the beginning of the play, this status makes his downfall from beloved general to despised murderer infinitely more tragic and moving (Kennedy & Gioia 857-858).

            According to Aristotle, however, the tragic hero’s collapse cannot be a simple deterioration from success to misery.  The most distinctive feature of the Aristotelian tragic hero is hamartia; his downfall must be brought about by a character flaw or flaw in judgment that leads to his destruction.  “In Aristotle’s theory of tragedy,” explains The Cambridge Guide to Literature, hamartia is “the mistake or failing which brings about the hero's downfall.  ‘Tragic flaw’, the usual English translation, can mislead by its concentration on moral weakness - encouraging readers to view Hamlet's fate as a condemnation of his uncertainty, or Othello's as a condemnation of his jealousy - since hamartia can also be a matter of ignorance or mistaken judgment” (“Hamartia”).  Thus hamartia is more than a moral weakness; it is a crucial mistake on the part of the tragic hero that causes him to plunge from greatness to grief.  Othello’s mistake as a tragic hero is believing Iago’s treacherous lies about Desdemona’s unfaithfulness.  Instead of investigating the matter further, Othello rashly jumps to the worst conclusions about his wife and believes every lie that Iago whispers into his ear. Although the villain Iago is certainly to blame for bringing about Desdemona’s murder and Othello’s suicide, Shakespeare makes it quite clear throughout the play that Othello’s impulsive behavior and irrational naïveté are the main cause of his miserable end, as Iago himself states at the beginning of the play: “The Moor is of a free and open nature, / That thinks men honest that but seem to be so, / And will as tenderly be led by the nose / As asses are” (1.3. 376-379).  Iago recognizes that he can use these weaknesses of Othello’s to hasten his downfall. Therefore Othello fits Aristotle’s description of a tragic hero who has descended from high estate to destruction because of his hamartia.  

But the tragic hero is not the only element required by Aristotle for tragedy. Neither is it the only component of Othello distinguishing Shakespeare’s play from a comedic drama.  A true Aristotelian tragedy also contains what the Greeks called a katharsis, or a purgation that leaves the audience feeling justified and uplifted.  As Kennedy and Gioia point out, this purgation is not necessarily always a positive one (857).  In a tragedy like Othello, where almost all of the characters wind up dead, the audience is certainly not expected to feel happy or cheerful about the play’s conclusion, but they do feel a sort of justification at the lessons learned by the play’s characters and satisfaction in the villain’s punishment.  Elisa Galgut states that, “The concept central to Aristotle’s theory of tragedy – katharsis – has been the subject of much debate, and the traditional readings are modeled on some type of cleansing, medical purging or religious purification” (14).  Moreover, these interpretations assume that the fear and pity aroused by tragedy is purged throughout the play, resulting in the state of katharsis. The overall idea behind katharsis, she concludes, is that tragedy effects some sort of transformation in the audience’s emotions, leaving them with a feeling of justification (15).

Aristotle said, “The tragic pleasure is that of pity and fear, and the poet has to produce it by a work of imitation” (qtd. in Galgut 15).  This implies that to feel the satisfaction of a good katharsis in a tragedy, the drama must arouse feelings of pity and fear in the audience and then expunge those feelings through a satisfactory conclusion.   In Othello, Shakespeare certainly moves the audience to feel pity for Othello, for Desdemona, for Cassio, and even for Iago. They also fear for the fate of the happy couple, and realize their worst fears when Othello smothers his innocent wife in a jealous rage.  Once more the audience pities Othello when he recognizes afterwards that Desdemona is innocent and stabs himself in remorse. Even though the play does not end “happily ever after,” the deaths of the unhappy couple and the punishment of the villain Iago bring a sort of closure to the drama.

The ultimate purpose of katharsis in a tragedy, as Kennedy and Gioia point out, is to purify our feelings, refining them into something more ennobling (857).  The audience may not come away from a production of Othello laughing or feeling particularly cheerful, but they will certainly feel as though they have learned something important and witnessed an epic drama that has affected them morally and spiritually.  This is the purpose of tragedy – to dramatize the weaknesses, despair, and failings of the human spirit and to demonstrate how to better ourselves through this experience.  Through this emotionally charged plot filled with intrigue and conflict, Shakespeare has certainly met all of Aristotle’s requirements for katharsis. 

The last element of Aristotelian tragedy found in Shakespeare’s Othello is anagnorisis, a sort of epiphany or revelation of fact that was previously unknown to the tragic hero.  John MacFarlane states that Aristotle’s literal Greek definition of anagnorisis consists of two parts; “The first part of the definition characterizes recognition as a change from ignorance into knowledge, leading either to friendship or enmity” (367).  Shakespeare brings out this particular feature of anagnorisis towards the end of the play when Othello realizes that his trusted friend Iago has trapped him in a web of lies and has deceived him into thinking Desdemona is unfaithful.  Iago’s wife Emilia cries out before she dies, “Moor, she was chaste. She loved thee, cruel Moor. / So come my soul to bliss as I speak true” (5.2.258-259) and suddenly Othello understands that it is Iago who has misled him, not Desdemona.  This anagnorisis causes Othello to cry, “Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire! / O Desdemon! Dead, Desdemon! Dead! O! O!” (5.2.289-290), to stab and wound the villain Iago, and then to kill himself in remorse.

The second aspect of the Greek word anagnorisis is its more superficial, general connotation.  According to The Encyclopedia Britannica, anagnorisis simply conveys “the startling discovery that produces a change from ignorance to knowledge. It is discussed by Aristotle in the Poetics as an essential part of the plot of a tragedy… Anagnorisis usually involves revelation of the true identity of persons previously unknown, as when a father recognizes a stranger as his son, or vice versa” (“Anagnorisis”).  It is the simple epiphany experienced by the tragic hero as he realizes something significant, like the fact that he has killed the woman he loves for no reason.

This moment of revelation for Othello is the climax of Shakespeare’s play as everything comes together (or in Othello’s case, comes apart) before the tragic hero’s eyes and the full extent of Iago’s treachery and deceit is made clear to the him.  For the audience, the moment is especially climactic, because we have known the truth all along.  As Roger W. Herzel puts it: “When the man is Othello, a special kind of double vision comes into play: looking through our own eyes, we see the injustice of the action, but looking through the eyes of Othello we see its justice with equal clarity… In tragedy then, we witness an imitation of an action which has a terrible significance of which we are fully aware but the agent is not” (498).  The audience knows that Desdemona is innocent; thus, Othello’s baseless accusations and crime against her arouse special pity and loathing.  This makes the Othello’s anagnorisis at the end of the play exceptionally poignant.

How then does one distinguish a simple play of comedy from a great Aristotelian drama? Aristotle said three dramatic features provide this distinction: hamartia, katharsis, and anagnorisis (Kennedy & Gioia 856-858). Shakespeare’s great play depicting the downfall of a Moorish general through jealousy and deceit is such a tragic drama.   The Greek philosopher’s influence upon the sixteenth-century English playwright is evident in works such as Othello, as Sarah Dewar-Watson points out, “Discussion of Shakespeare's tragedies is still commonly framed in Aristotelian terms – the fall from greatness, the fatal flaw, the moment of catastrophe… It could be argued that Aristotle has had a hand in defining what is still generally regarded as the core of Shakespeare's tragic canon” (1). Through the character of Othello as a tragic hero with a fatal flaw, the purgation of emotion through the couple’s deaths and the punishment of Iago, and the epiphany Othello experiences at the end of the play, Shakespeare demonstrates with eloquence each and every one of Aristotle’s qualifications for tragedy. Othello is a tragic drama of epic proportions that has stood the test of time and continues to move audiences with its powerful themes of jealousy, intrigue, betrayal, faithfulness, death, and remorse.

References

Anagnorisis. (2013). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/22338/anagnorisis

Aristotle. (2010). Poetics. In X. Kennedy, D. Gioia, X. Kennedy, & D. Gioia (Eds.), Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing (p. 856). New York: Longman.

Dewar-Watson, S. (2004). Shakespeare and Aristotle. Literature Compass , 1 (1), 1-9.

Galgut, E. (2009). Tragic Katharsis and Reparation: A Perspective on Aristotle's Poetics. South African Journal of Philosophy , 28 (1), 13-24, 12.

Hamartia. (2000). In The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Retrieved from http://www.liberty.edu:2048/login?url=http://www.credoreference.com/entry/cupliteng/hamartia

Herzel, R. W. (1974). "Anagnorisis" and "Peripeteia" in Comedy. Educational Theatre Journal , 26 (4), 495-505.

Kennedy, X., & Gioia, D. (2010). Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing (6th Compact Edition ed.). (X. Kennedy, & D. Gioia, Eds.) New York: Longman.

MacFarlane, J. (2000). Aristotle's Definition of "Anagnorisis" . The American Journal of Philology , 121, 367-383.

Shakespeare, W. (2010). Othello, the Moor of Venice. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing (6th Compact Edition ed.). (X. Kennedy, & D. Gioia, Eds.) New York: Longman.

       

Studying A Dead Language

When I was a young and immature high school freshman, my classmates and I used to chant to my long-suffering tutor and father;

"Latin's a dead language,
Dead as dead can be,
First it killed the Romans,
And now it's killing me!"

(I believe we thought at the time that we were rather clever.)

But now, four years of Latin study later, I realize that there was actually a bit of truth to our ingenious little rhyme, at least in regards to the first half. (The fact that the complexity of the Latin language contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire is somewhat more disputable.) Latin is a dead language, "as dead as dead can be." Why, then, did I devote so much time to learning a tongue which I will never speak? (Unless I travel to the Vatican City someday to converse with the Pope - an event which I think is pretty unlikely.)

The simple answer is that my father, a former private high-school teacher and a highly educated individual, firmly believed in the rigors of a classical education and put us through unusual, intensive courses such as analytical logic, Latin, Hebrew, rhetoric, classical literature, and geography with all their old-fashioned trimmings. Thus, I had no choice but to memorize lists of grammatical chants and verbal rules in a dead language.

The more complex answer lies in the fact that, in spite of being "forced" to study a language I'll never speak, I actually enjoyed the learning process. Moreover, during the course of studying Latin, I came to more fully understand my father's reasoning behind teaching us this particular language. I also discovered a few reasons of my own for learning Latin.

Abba used to tell us; "Once you learn Latin, you have the perfect tool in your hands to easily learn all of the Romantic languages," (which include French, Spanish and Italian.) His former students often tell him how grateful they were to have learned Latin in high school - Latin made it simple for them to grasp entirely different Romantic languages in college much more quickly than their classmates who lacked Latin backgrounds. My piano teacher, who studied Latin throughout high school, simply tacked on Italian endings to her Latin vocabulary when she visited Italy, and the native Italians understood her just fine. Not to argue that a grasp of the Latin language is sufficient to communicate in other Romantic languages; but a knowledge of Latin certainly makes learning these languages much simpler. Or so I've been told.

I would often came back at my father's argument with the retort, "Well if I'm going to learn Spanish, why don't I just learn Spanish, and not waste my time learning its foundational language?" His excellent reply; after Latin, you can easily pick up any Romantic language. You can become fluent in Spanish as well as French as well as Romanian as well as Italian as well as Portuguese. Your options are numerous - you can quickly become polylingual, instead of settling for bilingual.  Latin must thus be understood, in some ways, as a language-learning tool, not simply as a language in and of itself (though of course it is that as well.)

However, Latin isn't just a tool for learning fancy foreign languages. Its profound influence on the English language must never be underrated. My father estimates that as much as 80% of the English language comes from Latin and Greek roots. Think of that - 80 per cent of an entire tongue! I can think of quite a few English words off the top of my head right now that come from Latin... "Umbrella" - from the Latin word "umbra", meaning "shade." "Sedentary" - from the Latin "sedes", meaning "seat". "Nocturnal" - from the Latin "noctis", meaning "night". "Deity" - from the Latin "Deus", meaning "God." "Language" - from the Latin "lingua", meaning "tongue." ("Think 'linguini'", as our classmate Becca used to remind us helpfully.) There are literally hundreds more. I'm quite proud of the fact that when I hear or read a new English word that I've never come across before, more often than not I can figure out its meaning from my knowledge of Latin. Thanks to my father/tutor, of course, who insisted that he teach us this "dead" language, and who taught it well.

Latin did not only provide me with a broad, comprehensive basis for English vocabulary - it also contributed to my understanding of English grammar as well. Latin mechanics does not work the same way as English. The Latin language is infinitely more complex, yet at the same time more efficient. For example; in English, we can tell if a word is an adjective, adverb, or noun by the word itself (beautiful, swiftly, person.) In Latin however, we figure out how the word is being used in a sentence by its particular ending. Certain words have certain sets of endings. The endings for first-declension nouns are; -a, -ae, -ae, -am, -ah, -ae, -arum, -is, -as, -is. (Yup. Most of the chants are still hard-wired in there...) So, depending on context, a first-declension noun will end in -a if it's being used as a singular noun, -ae if it's being used as a singular direct object, -am if it's being used as a singular possessive noun, etc. There are several sets of declensions, many different ways the endings can be used, and quite a few different names for each of those uses (accusative, genitive, nominative, ablative, dative.) I won't even try to explain what happens when it comes to Latin verbs.

See what I mean? Complex... yet systematic, economical, efficient. Because of this complexity, English grammar in contrast is a piece of cake. Learning how to wrap my mind around the details of Latin grammar gave me a very solid understanding of words in general, and all of the different ways in which they can be used.

It might sound like the dullest class in the world. But sometimes it was actually enjoyable. We had Latin vocabulary contests (played sort of like an ancient Roman "Blurt!"), translated the entire book of James from Latin to English, and read the stories of Troy, Aeneas, Dido, Caesar, Romulus and Remus in their originals. We encouraged each other in Latin - Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim - ("Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you"), complained in Latin - Cogito ergo doleo - ("I think, therefore I am depressed"), and apologized in Latin - Absit invidia - ("No offense intended"). Stacks and stacks of vocabulary cards, lists and lists of chants to memorize, pages of ancient sentences and stories to translate. It was fun.

I certainly don't regret it. The fact that I'm able to read Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame and O' Henry's Short Stories and understand their numerous Latin references without the help of a Latin-to-English handbook... that alone makes those four years worth it to me. I've come to agree wholeheartedly with my father's decision that a truly classically educated person is at least superficially familiar with the rudiments of the Latin language.

And last, but not least, Latin certainly comes in handy when you wish to show off... As the ancient Romans used to say;
"Quidquid Latina dictum, altum videtur": "Anything said in Latin sounds profound."