Othello as tragedy of evil, Evil in  Iago, Character of Iago

The tragedy of the heroic Othello and charming Desdemona has haunted the world but still the
most perplexing and controversial character is Iago. He has been called a psychotic, evil
incarnation, a serpent, demi devil, naturally contemptuous, cynical, wise knave, dirty dog,
indescribably, vulgar, evil doctor, and above all in Coleridge’s famous phrase motiveless
malignant.Unlike Hamlet where evil is pervasive and hangs over the whole country. In Othello,
it is personified in one character who wears the mask of seeming virtue. In Iago, we see evil as
deception and as a direct challenge to the order and harmony of the universe.

Despite his hypocrisy, Iago reveals himself to the reader as an active force of evil right from the
first scene of the play. It is Roderigo alone who is given the insight into Iago; but he is foolish
and doesn’t understand the implications of Iago’s plans. Iago stands for social disintegration. He
is not one of the servants who get paid by their masters for their service and are loyal to them. He
is the wicked one whose loyalty is a mask.The character of Iago is revealed in the very first
scene of the play when he rouses rabble in order to vindicate his anger against Othello. He
reveals to Roderigo his double nature and his evil purpose;

“In following him, I follow but myself;

Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so, for my peculiar end.”
A few lines later Iago says,

“I am not what I am.”

Iago’s reason is the sin of pride, for it denies the supremacy of God and sees man as the sole
author of his destiny, able to control himself and others by the power of his mind. It is expressed
in his speech to Roderigo which begins the words

“Virtue! A fig! ‘tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.”

In denying the purposes of the power of God, Iago strikes at the very roots of Christian
Humanism. He is only a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. He is conceited and
excessively proud of his intelligence and wisdom which ultimately cause the fall of his
personality.

He is a master dissembler, taking pride in his intellectual capacity to deceive others. But we find
Iago in his full power in the so-called temptation scene. It is quite interesting to follow the
tortuous path through which Iago leads Othello from calm self-confidence about love into a
tempestuous mood of jealousy. Iago uses the weapons in his armory, insinuation, unfinished
sentences, sly suggestion, and straight-forward lies to convince Othello about the possibilities of
Desdemona’s being unfaithful to him. The temptation scene begins with Othello’s utterance as
Desdemona going out in Act-III, scene-III.

“Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul

But I love thee;  And when I love thee not,
Chaos comes again.”
These lines are pregnant with irony and perdition in the character of Iago. The temper of Iago
moves very carefully inches by inches starting with the fact that he has just gathered from
Othello that Cassio had been in the lovers’ confidence during their courtship. Iago throws out
vague hints at Cassio’s probable affair with Desdemona. At one point, when Othello’s suspicion
is still in embryo, Iago arranges a brawl in which Cassio is implicated and natural prosperity
towards kindness pleads the care of Cassio. Iago makes use of them to sharpen his final weapon.
Iago reminds Othello about Desdemona,
“She did deceive her father-marrying you.”
He sees that Desdemona’s love for the Moor was only animal lust and nothing else.  He can
perceive only the outward appearance of Othello; he can’t see the qualities for which Desdemona
married him; and thus their relationship seems only a product of lust which lust must destroy.
Out of Iago’s failure of perception will come his own destruction, but his failure is inherent in
the very ‘reason’ by which he lives.

The audience doesn’t have the same views about Iago as the other characters in the play do. The
audience knows him to be a Semi-devil and the very incarnation of devil and the negation of
moral values.To the audience, he is devil; but to Othello, he is ‘Honest Iago.’ Honest is very
much like that of Claudius in Hamlet. He stands for false appearance and it is fitting that
Shakespeare should give the celebrated lines:  
 ‘’Who steals my purse steals trash
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.’’
The first two acts of the play reveal the evil of the unnatural marriage and that of Iago’s mask of
seeming virtue. Othello has the blackness of Satan, Iago the whiteness of truth and virtue. True
virtue bears the mark of evil and evil is marked with the semblance of honesty.  Shakespeare
assures the audience that of the falsity of these outward sign, that Iago is seemingly honest and
that Othello, despite his appearance, is a man of true nobility whom Desdemona can love for his
‘honours and his valiant parts’. We see his dignity before the consul where he denies the very
lechery which his outward color represents. Shakespeare’s deliberate reversal of normal
appearance is so shocking that the audience must be left till incredulous, with an uncertain fear
that appearance be still be truth. This fear is supported by Brabantio’s warning:
‘’Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see
She has deceived her father, and may thee.’’
Upon this seeming violation of nature, Iago will work his temptation of Othello and under Iago’s
influence; Othello will see Desdemona exactly Brabantio has seen her. In short, malignity and
villainous behavior in the character of Iago seem apparently to be motiveless although he, in his
soliloquy comes up with one after another, the explanation for his behavior. He talks about
Othello’s illicit relationship with Emilia, about his own lust for Desdemona, even Cassio’s
supposed relationship with Emilia. But all these are false rationalizations having no evidence. A
whole loss of psychological explanation can be supplied in the manner in which Iago acts. Still,
he will remain unfathomable as a character.In inventing Iago, Shakespeare has invented a
dramatist as skillful in evildoing as he is in presenting all kinds of human beings.