Mirror, mirror on the wall… who is to blame of them all?

I know, I know. The title sounds corny but at least I tried. Anyway, let us get into the more serious stuff. Who really is to blame for all the mischief that went on in Othello?

 Now most people would automatically assume that it was fully Iago’s fault just because he was the one who plotted the most against Othello. I mean, I can understand why one would believe that because usually, the person who does the most plotting is the person who holds the most blame. Since Iago basically ruined everyone’s life in the play, he should hold the most blame, right? In my opinion, that is completely wrong.

I wouldn’t say that Othello deserves all the blame but he does hold a significant amount. While reading, there were so many things that irked me about Othello’s character and the way he handled everything he was told. I honestly do not even know where to start. Let me just explain my thought process while reading Othello. At first, I thought Othello was such a good person. Maybe a little cocky, but nonetheless still a good person. As the play progressed, I started to see some changes, like him getting progressively angrier, which made m ad because he had no reason to get mad. At least, that’s what I thought. Then at the end, I thought that Othello was the dumbest person alive because he should never have believed Iago in the first place, even if he was his right-hand man. But enough ranting. Let’s get back to the real issue.

Wait… what was it again? Oh yeah, Othello causing all the trouble. In my opinion, Othello is the person I blame the most for various reasons. The first being that he did not appoint Iago as his lieutenant. Let’s think about it for a second. If Othello had appointed Iago to be the lieutenant in the first place, do you really think Iago would have gotten everyone involved in his tangled web of revenge and jealousy? Actually, that question is up for debate because Iago is a very surprising, angry, little person. But moving on….

The second reason is the fact that Othello would rather believe his lieutenant, Iago, over his own wife, Desdemona. Granted, your lieutenant is never supposed to lie to you and everything he says should be credible, but you obviously married your wife because she wouldn’t lie to you either, right? The amount of trust Othello placed in the hands of Iago were absolutely shocking to me. Even friends in our modern age do not put that same amount of trust in the hands of their other friends. That amount of trust allowed Iago to play Othello like a toy therefore leading to a bunch of important characters to their death. Othello’s anger played right into the hands of Iago and Iago was able to control almost everyone in the play. Not cool man…

I really did not want to throw Othello under the bus like this but sadly, I had to hand the blame over to him. His simple mistake was trusting Iago too much with basically his entire life. It was as if Othello was the marionette being controlled by Iago, the evil puppet master. But now, I want to know what you, my blog readers, think. As readers, we could tell that all the characters thought Iago was mostly to blame but tell me. Do you agree with me or do you think I’m entirely wrong? Tell me in the comments; I would love to know what you think!