Othello vs. OAlthough we may not hear about every murder that happens in a day, hundreds of homicides take place in twenty four hours. In today's time, it is not uncommon to hear of some crazy guy who killed his girlfriend for whatever reason and then killed himself from the heartache. As people read things such as Shakespeare's Othello, they make comments about the tragic deaths that many of his characters experience. But in reality, our world in this time has things like that happen day in and day out, sometimes worse than the fates that Shakespeare comes up with for his characters. In a more recent version of the play, the movie O takes normal twentieth century high school students ...view middle of the document...
The drugs prevent him from thinking clearly, making anything that Hugo says play out in his mind over and over again, just adding to the mental images that Hugo is giving him.Desi plays a strong woman who won't let any man put her down. She stands up to Odin several times during the movie, showing that twentieth century women play a much higher role in society than they did in Shakespeare's time. Desdemona seems much more compliant to her husband's demands, even when she knows that she is going to die that night. Rather than run, she goes to her bedchamber and gets ready for bed, all the while knowing that it will be her last night alive. At the beginning of the play she declares just how loyal she is to Othello by saying "to you [father], I am bound for life and education; I am hitherto your daughter: but here's my husband, and so much duty as my mother show'd to you, preferring you before her father, so much I challenge that I may profess Due to the Moor my Lord"(844). Desdemona knows her place in society and that is that she should be loyal to her husband or else she has been a bad wife. Sue Ferguson writes in an article about women's roles in society called What is What You Make it that "[men] encouraged women to believe their happiness hinges on conforming to traditional gender roles"(2). Desi, however, doesn't know that she is going to be killed that night, but if she did know, she probably would not have stuck around her bedroom waiting to be killed.Another character that changes between the play and the movie is Iago. He would be considered the perfect villain in the play. He never seems to get fazed when he destroys Othello and Desdemona's relationship, when he makes Othello go crazy or when he kills Rodrigo. Nothing is really driving him besides the fact that he hates Othello for not promoting him. His character in O, Hugo, is a little bit different. He is trying to receive his father's love and is very tired of living in the shadows of Odin, so he wants to destroy Odin in order to make his father, amongst other people, notice him. Hugo, too, is involved w...
