H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e6 2out of a self- image. It is one of his few points of resemblance
to Ernest Hemingway, apart from the fact that Hemingway,
too, committed suicide. Othello is a character without a context –
literally so, since as a Moor, a man of mixed Berber and Arab
stock, he is something of a displaced person in his adopted city
of Venice.
The Moor of Venice is a resplendent creation, but we will go
astray if we accept his own estimate of himself too readily. There is
a histrionic quality to this hero. He is a man who seems curiously
aware that he is speaking Shakespearian blank verse:
Never, Iago. Like to the Pontic sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne’er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont;
Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
Shall ne’er look back, ne’er ebb to humble love,
Till that a capable and wide revenge
Swallow them up...Othello dies at the end of the play, as tragic heroes tend to do,
but he is determined to go out on a high theatrical note:
Set you down this:
And say besides that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turban’d Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduc’d the state,
I took by th’ throat the circumcised dog ,
And smote him – thus. (He stabs himself)