At the climactic ending of the play, Iago's plot is given away to Othello by his own wife, Emilia. Iago sees his wife as an obstacle and a nuisance so he kills her. He kills her not as much out of anger but for pragmatic reasons. Emilia is a stumbling block in front of his path. She serves no purpose to him anymore and she can now only hurt his chances of keeping the position he has been given by Othello. Iago's merciless taking of Emilia's and Roderigo's lives is another proof of his amorality.
Iago’s character became a focal point of discussion for many critics as they argued weather Iago was pure evil or just a complex amoral villain. The famous phrase, "The motive-hunting of motiveless Malignity," occurs in a note Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote in his copy of Shakespeare, as he was preparing a series of lectures delivered in the winter of 1818-1819. The note concerns the end of Act 1, Scene 3 of Othello, in which Iago takes leave of Rodrigo, saying, "Go to, farewell. Put money enough in your purse," and then delivers the soliloquy beginning "Thus do I ever make my fool my purse." Here is Coleridge's note:
The triumph! again, put money after the effect has been fully produced. -- The last Speech, the motive-hunting of motiveless Malignity -- how awful! In itself fiendish -- while yet he was allowed to bear the divine image, too fiendish for his own steady View. -- A being next to Devil -- only not quite Devil -- & this Shakespeare has attempted -- executed -- without disgust, without Scandal! -- (Lectures 1808-1819 On Literature 2: 315)
Coleridge's phrase is often taken to mean that Iago has no real motive and does evil only because he is evil. This is not far from what Coleridge meant, but he almost certainly wasn't using the word "motive" in the same way as it's now used. We use it to mean "an emotion, desire, physiological need, or similar impulse that acts as an incitement to action" ("Motive"). This definition equates "motive" and "impulse"; Coleridge, however, thought the two quite different. He makes this distinction in an entry he wrote for Omniana, a collection of sayings assembled by his friend Robert Southey and published in 1812. Here is what Coleridge wrote:
It is a matter of infinite difficulty, but fortunately of comparative indifference, to determine what a man's motive may have been for this or that particular action. Rather seek to learn what his objects in general are! -- What does he habitually wish? habitually pursue? -- and thence deduce his impulses, which are commonly the true efficient causes of men's conduct; and without which the motive itself would not have become a motive.
Thus Coleridge asserts that Iago's motives were spawned from his, keen sense of his intellectual superiority and his love of exerting power. And so Iago's malignity is "motiveless" because his motives (in Coleridge's sense) - being passed over for promotion, his suspicion that Othello is having an affair with his wife, and the suspicion that Cassio is also having an affair with Emilia - are merely rationalizations.
If we take a closer a closer look at Iago’s motives, we might be able to better fathom Coleridge’s assumptions.
One of the underlining issues in Othello is the racist attitude towards coloured people. Although there are lots of things to suggest this is a racist play I don't think that racism actually dominates the play, even though it has a racist theme. There is a romantic union between black and white which gets destroyed because most people think the relationship is wrong. At the time the play was written, 1604, even the Queen of England was racist so there must have been a strong hatred of blacks around that time. Most racist comments in the play are said by people that are angry or upset. For example, when Emilia found out that Othello had killed Desdemona she was extremely mad and she called Othello a Blacker devil, this was the only time in the play that she says anything racist towards Othello. The main characters that have racist attitudes are Iago, Brabantio and Roderigo, with the hatred of Othello as the basis for their racist actions and comments. Iago is the most racist character in the book as his hatred for Othello spans right from the start. What sparks off Iago's hate towards him is the fact that when Othello chose his lieutenant, it was Cassio who was chosen instead of Iago. What made Iago angry was the fact that Cassio had no experience in war when he did and Cassio was chosen instead of him. Iago does not say anything racist to Othello's face but he has a lot to say against him behind his back. He schemes to destroy Othello and anything in his way including Cassio and Desdemona.
Iago has a lot of self esteem and he often conveys this whilst talking to Roderigo. In order to prove to Roderigo that he hates Othello, Iago tells the story of how he got passed over for promotion to lieutenant. He comments, . Later in the same scene, still explaining his hatred of Othello, Iago praises those who serve their masters only for their own purposes. He says that they . We would call such persons embezzlers, but Iago sees them in another light:
When Roderigo tells Iago that he will drown himself because he can't have Desdemona, Iago tells him to have some self-respect, and says of himself, . A "guinea-hen" is a showy bird with fine feathers or in our sense a ‘cunning female’. However, after Roderigo has left, Iago tells us that Roderigo is not entitled to any self-respect, . A snipe is a bird notorious for its flightiness and its tendency to run right into traps. Clearly, Iago considers himself vastly superior to Roderigo.
Enlivened by such other significant topics as contemporary racism, the uses of verbal and psychological poison, the changing roles of women, the lust for revenge, images of foreignness, the tempest on sea and in Othello's mind, the isolation of an island universe, the reversion to brutish behavior, and the ironic importance of the handkerchief, Shakespeare's play takes us on a geographic and psychological journey into the wilderness of the human heart. If we truly give ourselves over to the mystical experience of theatre, we can become one with Othello—navigating through the landscape of the play, alternately seduced by good and evil—and thereby change the world we live in as it inevitably changes us.