8 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2024
    1. So come my soul to bliss, as I speak true.So speaking as I think, alas, I die

      Perhaps the letting go of one's responsibilities, one's expectations and civility (as a woman) leads to her death, meaning that all life shallowly is, is the battle between ourselves and society's imposing constructs, and once this conflict is overcome, we are at peace -- we can ascend into heaven. This alignment between our inner clarity and our actions is what leads her to die "peacefully".

    2. Oh, I were damned beneath all depth in hell,But that I did proceed upon just groundsTo this extremity.

      So it was simply out of again, external rules and regulation, to maintain civility is to conform to the right and wrong of the outside world.

  2. Mar 2024
    1. Is this the natureWhom passion could not shake?

      Ahh I see, the civility is based on being Iago, keeping one's passions, desires subdued -- he turns into a monster because he cannot accept his emotions and true self reflection by himself. Now that Iago has fished them out, he doesn't know how to deal with them. Like inferior function, repressing it only makes the inner darkness grow more dangerous.

    2. Alas, thrice-gentle Cassio,My advocation is not now in tune.

      The fact that Desdemona is sometimes represented as divinity, as a guardian angel, shows that the fact that Othello is rejecting her advocation shows he is falling into his devil, into his inner Iago -- he is losing touch with God, with righteousness (while ironically thinking he is doing the right thing by being civil)

    3. This hand of yours requiresA sequester from liberty, fasting, and prayer,Much castigation, exercise devout,For here’s a young and sweating devil here,That commonly rebels. 'Tis a good hand,A frank one

      How he is describing her as honest to her heart, but not so much civil. That she would lie to Brabantio for her passions, and would therefore lie to Othello for Cassio -- that he doesn't value honesty but values civility.

    4. you were wont be civil.The gravity and stillness of your youth

      Notice how words like "Gravity" and "stillness" associated with civility and virtue -- however heaviness, gravity, and stillness has a connotation of death, not life.

      Is Iago somehow a villain that brings life? Not a villain, but a hero? An anti-hero?

    5. Are we turned Turks?

      Othello describes this chaos as Turks, as the foreign, as the other, as the out-group. This means he prizes his in-group due to their civility and restraint -- in other words their ability to maintain composure for the sake of pride. The rejection of the inner demon only creates more destruction (Inferior Function)

    6. A knave very voluble, no furtherconscionable than in putting on the mere form of civiland humane seeming, for the better compassing of hissalt and most hidden loose affection.

      He is describing Cassio as a monster or devil with a facade of human civilness, when in fact it is Iago who is the monster, but fully civil and detached from his emotions. He sees the devil in desire, lust and love, when in fact the one who ruins it all is the one who cannot accept the human subjective nature including feeling and emotion