Is Iago A Hero Or A Villain

In the studies of Shakespeare, there are many ways to approach and analyze his plays, yet the most common ones are to dissect the characters’ purpose and engagement throughout a story. Shakespeare has created many well-known characters that may seem life-like to the audience and there are others that seem impossible to exist in reality. In most of Shakespeare’s plays, there is a hero and with a hero, there is usually a villain. Some audience members generally have a tendency to speculate great analytical views about the heroes of the play while villains are ignored and perceived to be even more evil. This may be true, but the portrayal of villainous characters does not mean that they were forced to become evil. The query is how a villain becomes
This suggestion can be understood as resulting from his chief goal of deceiving Roderigo but also from his misogyny. It seems that Iago truly hates women because, despite using them to seek revenge on Cassio and Othello, he repeatedly expresses his disgust toward them. For example, when referring to his own wife, he says that: “She puts her tongue a little in her heart / And chides with thinking” (II.i.105-106). The ultimate display of Iago’s contempt toward women is when he leads Emilia’s and Desdemona’ husbands to murder them. For these reasons, Iago is definitely the only person to blame for Othello’s bloodbath; he manipulates many characters and transitions a comedic play to a tragic ending. In the end, Iago was too self-absorbed because, when he realized how easily he manipulated Othello and Cassio, he decided to wield other characters for his own benefit. Evidently, Iago demonstrates that, even when villains achieve their primary objectives, they destroy other character’s lives for the sake of their excessive ambition. This demonstrates how evil characters never triumph in the end because they lose the audience’s empathy and their lives as a consequence of pursuing excessively evil