loss of love Flashcards
(8 cards)
‘Let her rot and perish and be damned tonight, for she/ shall not live. No my heart is turned to stone’
Metaphor - the violent bodily imagery instigates fear for the audience as Othello seems removed from any previous emotion or morality he had
Get me some poison, Iago’/ ‘Do it not with poison, strangle her’
Poison is ironic considering this has become symbolic of Iago’s manipulation yet Iago uses a more violent approach this time perhaps drawing a line between his poison that leads to pyschological harm and strangulation that leads to physical
‘Devil! [he strikes her]’ / ‘I have not deserved this’
Othello becomes physcially violent to her and yet Desdemona passively resists it as she can do no more
‘Put out the light, and then put out the light/ If I quench thee, thou flaming minsiter/ I can again thy former light restore’
Light is symbolic of light and happiness, it is also symbolic of God. Othello is asking to hide his act from God to kill Desdemona, which itself is for selfish reasons, as he seeks to restore his peace of mind rather than their relationship
‘My wife, my wife! What wife? I have no wife.
The repetition shows his init.ial shock at the act and the realisation of what he has done and now what he has lost
‘Tis the plague of great ones; Prerogative as they are less than base. ‘Tis destiny shunnable, like death’
Similie - relates to the loss of something and in this case it is loss of loyalty
‘This is a subtle whore/ and closet lock and key of villanious secrets/ and yet she’ll kneel and pray’
Metaphor - depicts Desdemona as cunning and calculated, all the things she is not and Iago is, Othello hates these characteristics yet it is ironic that his closest friend embodies all of these and his most hated does not
‘She’s like a liar gone to burning hell’/’She turned to folly; and she was a whore.’
Othello at the start of the play spoke of Desdemona with love and respect yet this emphasises the descent of their relationships as he uses unfavourable descriptions of her
