BLOG 9 - Othello

To further my conversation about the play Othello, there are many references to virtue and vice.  Rights after Cassio has drunk too much wine, Iago says, “You see this fellow that is gone before. / He’s a soldier fit to stand by Caesar / And give him direction, and do but see his vice. / ‘Tis to his virtue a just equinox, / The one as long as th’ other.  ‘Tis pity of him.” (II.iii.114-118).  In other words, Iago is saying that just as day and night are of equal length during an equinox, Cassio’s immoral actions are equal to his moral behavior. 

            As it turns out, the equinox is not the only reference to the solar system.  In Act 3, Emilia asks Desdemona if Othello is a jealous man.  Desdemona says, “Who? he? I think the sun where he was born / Drew all such humors from him.”  (III.iv.30-31).  It seems as though Desdemona implies that the sun makes it impossible for him to be jealous.  This citation becomes even more interesting when compared with two others, which occur in Act 5.  Directly after killing his innocent wife, Othello says, “Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse / Of sun and moon, and that th’ affrighted globe / Did yawn at alteration.”  (V.ii.100-102).  In an eclipse, of course, the moon travels between the sun and the earth, blocking the light of the sun from the earth.  The metaphor is complete when Emilia asks Othello why he killed Desdemona.  Othello responds, “It is the very error of the moon.  / She comes more nearer earth than she was wont / And makes men mad.” (V.ii.110-112).  Basically, the moon symbolizes Desdemona and the “affrighted globe” symbolizes Othello.  As Desdemona said earlier, it is the sun that extracts the jealousy from Othello.  So as the moon travels too closely to the earth, or as Desdemona and Othello’s relationship has deepened, it blocks out the light of the sun, casting a dark shadow on the earth, which drives men mad.  More specifically, the blocking of the sun has made Othello jealous.  In this light, we can see how darkness symbolizes jealousy and the light represents trust.