Othello By William Shakespeare: The Character Of Desdemona
In Shakespeare’s Othello the Desdemona, the wife of Othello, ranges from a mix of emotions starting with the opening of the play having her be filled with joy and happiness until the end where confusion and sadness are her final thoughts. From this wide array of her character’s paths, each detail of the way she is thinking is clearly expressed which guides the rest of the play along with her. The emotional arch of Desdemona is greatly the emotional impact that the readers feel as well.
At the start of the playsets a scene of Desdemona and Othello having come back from being married. Their spirits are high as the adrenaline of just starting a marriage with the passion and intensity for one another is at its peak. The way in which they speak towards each other is with such love and tenderness such as with the lines from Desdemona written, “The rites for which I love him have bereft me, And I a heavy interim shall support By his dear absence. Let me go with him.” (1,3). Her great desire to be with him even in war, a place where she herself may face death and injury, is the extent that she will sacrifice to be with her love. Her need to be with him and the same of him for her conveys the trust in one another that even in danger they will truly still be at peace. Her drive to always be beside him shows how much she will sacrifice for her love. This mighty rush of passionate love is the ultimate juxtaposition from the beginning to the end of the play with the one she loves ultimately being her demise from himself being easily persuaded and manipulated. In her final words with Othello as she begins to foresee her fate, her last words which perfectly encapsulate her shock and horror are written, “And yet I fear you; for you are fatal then When your eyes roll so: why I should fear I know not, Since guiltiness I know not; but yet I feel I fear” (5,1). Her puzzlement as to why she is going to be murdered especially by her love overcome her in shock just as it does for the reader. For her husband to turn to such a monster so easily comes as a mighty opposite to the way he is depicted in the beginning. His reasoning to not even let her speak her mind and ask whether or not she did acts that would even possibly warrant her death go over Othello as he is so sickened by her fabricated acts that only death to him is the answer.
The pathway of the play Othello from its two polar opposite start and ending points of a great love story turned to tragic murder scene through the eyes of Desdemona showcase how the words written at the beginning with such sweetness and optimism can turn to passionate hatred and torture. Desdemona’s light with which she begins her marriage with Othello quickly turns to enragement by him with her always loving him up until the moment he kills her while Othello only finds remorse when it comes to that Desdemona was telling the truth the entire time. Desdemona’s path throughout the play was of her honesty which ultimately was not enough to save her from a different man she had thought she married.
