Is Othello a Hero? Research Paper Example

“Othello” is one of Shakespeare’s most significant works in history that remains to charm readers for its originality and never-expiring themes. Although the date it was written is not precisely known, it is said to have been written somewhere around 1603. Being such an old work, it has continued to charm the audience, the reason it has been adopted into so many fashions. The play revolves around several themes, including jealousy, revenge, and passion. However, this paper focuses on the heroism of the main character, “Othello.”

All writers have one thing in common: their primary goal is to communicate a particular message to society. And Shakespeare is no less. The play was written when the “Republic of Venice” was at war with the “Ottoman Turks.” The whole play also revolves around the war, where two characters, Othello and Lago, are fighting over a promotion, but the young wife of Othello gets caught in the crossfire. In act one, Lago has been eying a promotion for so long and feels that now is the time.  But instead, the general, Othello, gives it to someone else. This shows that Othello did not care about who had been there for how long, but he was ready to promote the person he saw as capable. Although Lagos later raises a tough fight to regain his promotion, Othello is not shaken to change his mind.

It also means that Othello is a hero because Lago does not want to confront him directly to demand the promotion he seems to believe he deserves. Instead, he goes to Roderigo to urge him to continue chasing Desdemona, who happens to have secretly married Othello. Lago knows that Othello has married Desdemona against her father’s wish, and he wants to utilize his foe’s weakness to win his promotion back. But why doesn’t he want to confront him directly? It looks like Lago is aware that picking a fight with Othello is not the wise move because he will not win. And what else would it mean when someone is afraid of you that he chooses to use other people to fight his war, except that you a hero?

To be considered a hero, someone has to emerge a winner regardless of the number of enemies they have to fight (Allison & George, 3). In act one, Othello seems to have accumulated a significant number of enemies already, all with the same goal – to throw him out of the game. But at the end of it, he still manages to remain standing in his position. For example, Desdemona’s father, Brabantio, is a senator with enough power to have Othello arrested, but he fails because Othello has an influence of his own. Although Othello is fighting alone against Lago, Brabantio, and Roderigo in act one, he manages to surprise them by winning the fight. This is because they all want him out of their way, but he remains standing.

Othello is also a successful soldier. When the senator sends the Militia to arrest Othello, and they end up finding him in a council where the senator is also summoned to come, they find him explaining the reason he was able to charm Desdemona into marrying him, which he says is the stories of his success as a soldier. If the stories were good enough to convince the senator’s daughter that Othello was the right man she should marry, it means that they were heroic stories, portraying Othello as a true hero.

Furthermore, he could not earn the promotion as the general except he had the suitable qualification for the position. This also confirms that the stories he had been telling Desdemona about his competence as a soldier were legit. A soldier in the making – a successful one at that – only made one thing: that Othello had been in the military for quite some time, and he had served well. And if he had been promoted to the position of a general whose duty was to lead the other soldiers to win the war, it means that he was a hero.

It also shows heroism that Othello stands by his word that Desdemona would confirm what he had just told them why she loves him. Othello says that they should take away the promotion he has been accorded with as a general and even be thrown in prison if Desdemona does not repeat what he had told the council to her father. This shows that he trusted his guts like a hero and believed in Desdemona’s love for him. For the record, the role of a heroic character is to show that people do not have to distort the truth to win, however narrow the chances of winning are (Vandello, Goldschmied, & Kenneth, 340). In that case, as a hero, Othello was ready to take his chances to win the fight once and for all.

Othello’s incentive to be a leader in the military is to see people live in peace. Even though he is not involved in the incidents that lead to the stabbing of Cyrus’s Governor, Montano, he enters in the middle of it to curb the situation. This shows that Othello is a man of integrity and wants no unnecessary violence. He even trusts Lago, who has no idea is going behind his back trying to lure Roderigo into continuing to pursue Desdemona and steal her away from Othello. Regardless of all of this, Othello notices that Cassio is the one who has stabbed the governor, and he demotes him from his position as a lieutenant. This also shows that Othello cared about other people, and he was not ready to work alongside a lieutenant who did not show that care to others.

As a leader, general Othello does not demote his lieutenant, Cassio, with aggression, but he does it with dignity. If Othello were not a hero, he would have started shouting at Cassio because he had picked a fight with the governor and even stabbed him. Instead, he said, “Cassio, I love thee But never more be an officer of mine” (Shakespeare, 17). This shows that there was nothing personal between him and Cassio, but he was trying to prevent something like that from happening again in the future. It also shows that he is a person who likes to take responsibility for rectifying an error among his crew, even though it means losing his lieutenant – whom he loves.

As a leader, Othello is also a person who likes to get to the bottom of a matter before making his decision. When he heard a fight between the governor and Cassio, he did not want to make a hasty decision to punish either of them without enough information about who had started the scene. That is why he asks Lago, who confirms that it was Cassio. Although this later comes to grow into something else, Othello was not ready to punish the wrong person. In that case, he ends up demoting Cassio because the finger of starting the fight had been pointed at him.

Heroic leaders also do things for the benefit of the group and not for themselves (Allison & George, 7). Othello demotes Cassio when he picks a fight with the governor, demonstrating that he is a leader who puts his group first. He knows that if Cassio continues to be the leader, he will use his position to start a fight with someone else in the future, which would affect the group. And since he does not want that, he decides to take action before it is too late. It also shows that he is a leader who takes risks for the sake of his group. Although he was not ashamed to refer to Cassio as his friend even after being involved in a fight with the governor, he was also not ashamed to demote his friend from the lieutenant position. This shows that he was ready to lose a friend for the sake of saving his group from future embarrassment.

Lago knew that Othello was a hero, which was why he tried to use that against him. Since Lago was aware of Othello’s integrity, he knew that if he sent Desdemona to persuade him to reinstate Cassio, he would consider it. Heroism is all about incurring a high cost so that others might benefit (Kraft-Todd & David, 1). In that case, when Othello was told about reinstating Cassio back to being lieutenant, he agreed. This shows that, although Othello was aware of Cassio’s flaws – which was why he had demoted him in the first place – he was ready to carry them and give him his position back.

Furthermore, Lago also used Othello’s honesty against him. As a friend, Lago was confident that Othello trusted him. Heroic leaders value honesty, and that was what Othello did. Little did he know that Lago was a hypocrite trying to bring him down to have the position he had as a general. The fact that Lago was a hypocrite portrays Othello as a hero. This is because Othello continued to trust him. Although he did not know that Lago was pretending to be his trusted friend, it shows that Othello was trustworthy and that what he expected from Lago, which is why he never cared to test the honesty.

Othello also expected the same honesty from his wife, Desdemona. Although he later comes to be tricked by Lago that Desdemona is in love with Cassio, he believes that there is enough evidence to confirm that claim. Lago tricks him that the handkerchief he had given to Desdemona as her first gift is with Cassio, which showed that she had started to value Cassio more than she loved him. Following this evidence, Othello begins to suspect that Desdemona is guilty of the claims. Again, Lago does this because he knows that Othello trusts him. And since he has never given him any reason to doubt his honesty Lago knows that Othello is not going to start now. This transpires that, as a leader, Othello believes in a solid prove he can see as the explanation of his suspicion. It also means that if there were no prove he would not have started to suspect his wife. All these are qualities of a hero because heroes do not do things out of vague judgments but out of reason.

However, it can also be argued that Othello is not a hero because Lago tricked him. But on the contrary, this very fact makes him the hero he is, first, according to how Lago plots his deceit scheme. It should be noted that he was clever, careful, and cunning. This now brings us to the point. If Lago is such a smart person, it means that he had predicted what Othello would do if he found out that his wife was cheating, which is precisely what he does when he becomes so full of range that he tries to kill his wife. That being the case, then, we deduce that Othello hated selfish actions and believed that whoever did them was liable for punishment so great that it could equal death. And second, if this is what he thought, then it means that he could not do it to someone else. And that is where the heroism about this comes in.

Heroes are people who take risks so big that they are hard to be justified (Franco et al., 8). A chance that can be justified is that the risk-taker can solidify why people can believe in why they had to do it. Sometimes the risk is, even so, considering that the risk-taker himself cannot explain it to himself. Othello was ready to take that kind of risk. When he was told that his wife was sleeping with Cassio, he decided to kill them both. Again, the end product of this is actually not heroic because it involves two deaths, but its attempt is. As a leader, attempting to kill someone for their sins shows how big the sin is. It does not mean it should be done, but it means that it’s an excellent lesson to society. He could not justify the attempt, but it set an example to others never to do something like that.

Although Lago might look like the hero for his deceit that goes undetected almost throughout the play, he fails to understand that he was bound to be caught sooner or later. And to aggravate his predicaments, he was fighting for something that did not belong to him. He also failed to understand that being a leader was not something Othello had cheated for but something he had earned through his heroism in the military. Here, the point is that Lago’s antagonism of the cold war is what intensifies Othello’s heroism. Although he was being deceived that there was a problem with his marriage, how he fights to fix it shows a heroic leader’s qualities. As a leader in his family, if he could go that far trying to fix his problem, he could go farther to restore the military issues.

In the end, Othello decides to take the same punishment he has been trying to give to the people he believes have wronged him. When he realizes that he has been attempting to kill his wife for sins she has not committed, he tries to turn on Lago, who he has learned that is the cause of all the chaos, but he gets away. And that is when he decided to commit suicide. This can mean two things. Either he felt so much guilt that he could not take it anymore, or that he found out that he was the one who deserved to die. Either way, both reasons were heroic.

Many people might not see feeling gilt as heroic, but it is because it means that you have accepted your mistake. What you do after the guilt consumes you is what can be considered a courageous act. In this case, Othello decided to take his own life because he felt like that was the suitable punishment for what he had been doing to innocent people. If doing what they had done to deserve being killed was worth it, how much more was attempting to kill innocent people. However, killing yourself is sometimes considered cowardice, but the reason behind it can overturn it to be heroism. For example, Othello killed himself because he believed that the sins he had done deserved that. And if he did not hesitate to do it on himself, it means that he was a hero. A leader who wanted to lead by example (Allison et la., 2).

Work Cited

Shakespeare, William. othello. De Gruyter, 1871.

Allison, Scott T., and George R. Goethals. Heroes: What they do and why we need them. Oxford University Press, 2011.

Vandello, Joseph A., Nadav Goldschmied, and Kenneth Michniewicz. “Underdogs as heroes.” Handbook of heroism and heroic leadership. New York: Routledge (2016): 339-355.

Allison, Scott T., and George R. Goethals. Heroic leadership: An influence taxonomy of 100 exceptional individuals. Routledge, 2013.

Kraft-Todd, Gordon T., and David G. Rand. “Rare and costly prosocial behaviors are perceived as heroic.” Frontiers in psychology 10 (2019): 234.

Franco, Z. E., Allison, S. T., Kinsella, E. L., Kohen, A., Langdon, M., & Zimbardo, P. G. (2018). Heroism research: A review of theories, methods, challenges, and trends. Journal of humanistic psychology, 58(4), 382-396.

Allison, Scott T., George R. Goethals, and Roderick M. Kramer, eds. Handbook of heroism and heroic leadership. Taylor & Francis, 2016.