I thought the article we read for today's class was interesting. A good portion was full of thought provoking and potentially enlightening thoughts and ideas. There is something to be said through "Othello" about England's relationship with the Ottoman and Islamic cultures in their time period. At first, I did not see much significance in this aspect of the play but now I see how it could have been central for the time period. However, then I realized that this article analyzes almost the entirety of the play in relationship to its own thesis- EVERYTHING. And I suddenly became very uncomfortable (well as uncomfortable as you can get with an assigned reading about Shakespeare). I thought back upon previous experiences involving Othello in my education- 9th grade Humane Letters and 14th grade (just kidding) I mean sophomore year of College. In both instances I could remember different thoughts regarding almost the entire range of subjects and events covered by the article. Which leads me to two other thoughts: 1) Shakespeare is incredibly complex and there is no way this author, or anyone else for that matter, can try to paint the meaning of his plays with one simple theme or central point. Bottom line is you can't try to simplify him, this dude is complex and so are his plays and characters. 2) We have no way of knowing what Shakespeare was really thinking and intending with his plays. Add to that the the complexity and depth of his writing abilities, we have a recipe for relative ignorance regarding the true significance of his plays. I felt plunged into a dark depth regarding Shakespeare with an inability to climb my way out through truth. ALAS! I WILL NEVER KNOW WHY IAGO DID IT! I WILL NEVER THE TRUE MEANING BEHIND OTHELLO'S METHOD OF SUICIDE! I WILL NEVER KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ANYONE OR ANYTHING IN ANY OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS FOR CERTAIN!
and then... I realized I simply needed to make peace with my ignorance and grow in knowledge from all possible theses and themes, hidden meanings and cultural contexts. After all, if we really knew what Shakespeare was intending to tell us we would be missing out on about a million possible different plays, and that would be much much worse than not knowing one for certain.
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I agree. I think there were a lot of interesting points in this article, but he was trying to simplify it. At some points near the end, I thought that he was stretching it.
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