Discuss the presentation of Desdemona In the Play Othello

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Discuss the presentation of Desdemona In the Play Othello

In the play Othello, Desdemona plays quite a big role as Othello's wife and she is portrayed as a beautiful young white girl from Venice. Desdemona is complimented throughout the play with words such as 'divine', 'and the grace of heaven'. Othello who is the Moor of Venice, has a position in the army which would make a lot of people jealous. One of these people is Othello's ancient Iago, Othello's right hand man, who Othello trusts and throughout the play he is referred to as ''honest Iago''. Iago plots to destroy Othello and he can only achieve his ends through the weakness of others in this respect Othello's weakness is Desdemona. Iago uses Desdemona as the means of destroying Othello. He lies to Othello he does this by tricking him into thinking that Desdemona is sleeping with Othello's lieutenant Michael Cassio. As this progresses into a bigger lie throughout the play Desdemona gets treated worse as she is manipulated.

Othello and Desdemona, as portrayed in the play are the two greatest innocents there ever were. The two appear to love one another romantically at first, but this romantic love becomes more of a profane love, or more likely it was truly profane love all along. In the play Desdemona can be portrayed in two ways, she can be both a strong character and a weak character.

Desdemona's bravery shows her strength in Act 1 Scene 3. In this Scene Desdemona disobeys her father, she goes from being a very protected daughter to disobeying Brabantio by marrying Othello behind his back. When Iago informs Brabantio of this news he accuses Othello of using drugs as a means of tricking Desdemona into loving him. Brabantio thinks this because Desdemona could have had any man she wanted yet she picked an old black man. Othello claims that his innocence will set him free as he says in Act 1 Scene 3, and he tells Brabantio that the only trickery he has used is his war stories. Desdemona is little more than a girl and has never really lived on her own and she is inexperienced in the ways of the world. So Othello's war stories of his adventures-accidents, escapes and slavery experiences had brought tears and sighs to Desdemona she was distressed, yet full of admiration for Othello as the hero of these stories. Brabantio initially thinks of Desdemona as a victim of Othello's magic charms.
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When Desdemona hears these stories she is swept off her feet by his virility. Desdemona courageously stands up to her father and tells him of her love for Othello. She says that her heart is subdued even to the very quality of her lord. This is a very courageous thing to do, as it was uncommon for a white woman to be married to a black man at the time that this play was written. This would cause a lot of jealousy to other men from Venice who would find it strange that a beautiful pure white Venetian ...

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