Rhetorical Analysis Of Othello's Speech

by his rhetoric, which is in fact at work even during the speech in question, irrefutably suggests a certain kind of egotism. Also, his story’s evocation of pity, regardless of the extent to which such a reaction is genuine or partially a product of Othello’s self-deception, would naturally be essential to his self-idealization and the boosted self-esteem that would come along with that, as it would not present him as a racially “inferior” man who is not in a position to be feared and repulsed, but rather, to be worthy of one’s compassion and sympathy. It is also noteworthy that Othello’s capacity for poetic lyricism would of course also starkly countermand any preconceptions of him as being linguistically ignorant, of expressing himself with
More precisely, the early modern prose romance was invested in the medieval chivalric romance, where knights would go on marvelous adventures in order to fulfil certain quests, often concluding with their discovery of true love. Othello’s “story of my [his] life” (1286) indeed consists of such elements of “wondrous” adventures to the utmost, given his breathtaking overabundance of references to all “the battles, sieges, fortunes” that he has “passed” over an astonishing time scale, dating “from my [his] boyish days”, lasting until “th’ very moment that he [Brabantio] bade me [him] tell it”, all his perilous and “deadly” exploits in wondrous lands inhabited by man-eating “Cannibals” and “Anthropophagi”, and in such romantic and quixotic places as “vast” caverns (“antres”), barren “deserts”, and “hills whose heads touch heaven” (1286). In addition to his story resembling a romance tale of knight-errantry, Othello’s self-depiction significantly constitutes a story of theological normalization, in stark antithesis to the perception of black people as “godless” (Scot 97). This is shown through Othello’s self-reference as a man “sold to slavery” who was thereafter led to his “redemption”, in addition to his speech’s strident reflection of that, either consciously or
By stating that Desdemona “loved me [him] for the dangers I [he] had passed” and that he “loved her that she did pity them” corroborates Carol McGinnis Kay’s argument that the basis for Othello’s and Desdemona’s love “is the grand romantic picture of Othello that they both admire and pity” (265). Hence, Othello’s “love” for his wife derives from “the image of Othello that Desdemona reflects to him” (265), which is, I would argue, even more explicitly indicated by Shakespeare when he has Othello proclaim to Desdemona that he “does love thee [her]”, and “when I [he] love[s] thee not, chaos is come again” (1314). Although I would insist on approaching those hypothetical nature of the roots of the couple’s relationship with a non-absolutist attitude, considering the limited access the audience has to the two characters either in the form of revealing asides or an adequacy of mutual interaction in any of the acts, I concur with Kay’s point, in that Othello’s love for Desdemona is rather self-oriented, a mirror of his own desirable self-concept as a romantic warrior, contrary to Mose Durst’s rather simplistic perception of “Othello’s love for Desdemona”, namely as having “given his life its most profound meaning” merely