Iago Is The Force Of Evil In Shakespeare's Othello

The character of Iago is crucial for the play, and its essence has often been presented as ‘the evil taking a human form.' What is important to any attempt to understand this play is the mechanism that makes the action moving forward. If this is ‘the force of evil', represented in the character of Iago, this gives him the most relevant role, the power to forward the entire course of the play in certain direction. A number of fortunate circumstances helps his plot, and even in the most dangerous moments everything seems to fit his plans. From the beginning the readers (or the audience) are fascinated by this character of ‘a villain' ; they are, in some way, participating in his plot, being the only spectators of his famous soliloquies in which he reveals (if he ever does) his true face, or at least, the bitter content of his thoughts. He is tormented by hate, jealousy and lust, he creates the self-deception about his own magnitude, his fantasies are
The greater complexity of Iago's character became more obvious, and he even gets his ‘diagnosis'. The number of traditional interpretations was rejected in order to create new ones, more corresponding to this new point of view. According to this method, Iago at he very end becomes the antipode of Othello as we see him before his downfall, his dark side, becoming once more a personification of a certain mental concept rather than a complete personality. Again deprived of his human quality, Iago is made ‘flat' and simplified. Shakespeare probably had some concept of introducing the abstract categories of good vs. evil, adding a certain universal dimension to Othello as a play, but to say that this symbolism is the main point of the characterization is clearly a mistake. Othello is even marked as ‘the most realistic of all Shakespeare's