Second Essay Assignment

The next writing assignment is an essay (approximately 5 pages long) on Shakespeare's Othello.

Bring a typed thesis, stated as a single, complete sentence, to class on Friday, October 15.

A complete first draft is due at the beginning of class on Tuesday, October 19.

I will return the draft with comments on Friday, October 22.

The final draft will be due at the beginning of class on Tuesday, October 26.

Here are the suggested topics for the essay:

• Othello is remarkable for among Shakespeare's plays for the continuity of its action and for its persistent attention to a relatively small number of major characters. This is what makes the staging of the Cheek by Jowl production, in which all of the player are on stage at all times, so appropriate. In such a play, we are constantly made aware of the contrasts between specific characters, as well as they ways that they echo each other in their thoughts and actions. In your essay, compare and contrast any two characters from the play. The possible combinations are nearly limitless, but many are particularly inviting: Desdemona and Emilia; Roderigo and Cassio; Cassio and Iago; Othello and Brabantio.
• “They are all but stomachs, and we all but food,” Emilia says of men and women. “They eat us hungerly, and when they are full / They belch us” (3.4.106-108). Write on the depiction of gender in Othello. Consider how women are seen by both male and female characters, how the various male characters understand and treat women, and how ideas of gender shape the characters’ actions. On the other hand, “male” is a gender, too. You might choose to write about how the actions of male characters are influenced by certain ideas of masculinity.
• Write about race in Othello. Pay particular attention to the character of Othello: how he is depicted as more or less different and foreign by different characters in different portions of the play; how he sees his own place in Venetian society; how his own understanding of race and of himself changes over the course of the play.
• In his final speech (Act 5, Scene 2, lines 348-366), Othello tells the gathered Venetians (and the audience) how he thinks he should be remembered; it is as if he is writing his own epitaph. How accurate is this epitaph? How well does Othello understand himself in the end? Compare this speech to we see of Othello in the rest of the play, and write an essay on Othello’s character and the degree to which he has or attains self-knowledge.

If you wish to write on another topic please discuss it with me first.