Othello - Crazy Characters

The image of a jealous person can be considered archetypal, since it is already found in ancient Greek mythology. Jealousy is a normal feeling for a loving person and does not belong to mental disorders. But only as long as this feeling does not go beyond the socially acceptable framework

Shakespeare rewards Othello with personality traits that do not fit well with his profession as a successful military leader and commander. Innocence, infantile gullibility, inability to understand people do not in any way agree with the image of such a character. Perhaps, by doing so, Shakespeare wanted to emphasize the omnipotence of jealousy, which reached a pathological level?

The development of this feeling is very well, practically in stages, painted by Shakespeare. Perhaps the author himself had to test it … At first, Othello's attitude towards slandering Desdemona is quite rational:

No, Iago, I'll see first

I'll see something, I'll check it again

And I will find out whether it is jealous here?

But suspicion, which soon intensified by slander, requires more detailed confirmation or refutation. And the spouse is being followed:

Tell your wife to keep an eye on Desdemona.

Reflections appear that are depressive in nature with a sense of self-humiliation and uncertainty that such a beauty could fall in love with him:

Why did I get married?..

I'm black, that's the reason. Language

I don't weave patterns like these dandies.

I've grown old.

The attacker Iago understands the psychology of the naive Othello better, and as a result turns out to be smarter than his boss. He is convinced:

All nonsense convinces a jealous person.

And after presenting a false "proof of treason", which the simple-minded Moor takes as true, Othello no longer tries to find out the circumstances of treason and decisively declares:

And I blow off the trace of love from myself, like fluff …

Oh hatred and revenge, be with me

And inflate my chest with the hiss of snakes …

Oh no, curse her, the walking creature!

Damn her …

As they say, "Ostap suffered."

The delusional ideas that have arisen find their confirmation in completely abstract facts. Any of them pours water on the mill of the "green-eyed witch" - jealousy

So, the hand of his wife in his view is already a reliable fact of treason!

Othello: Give me your hand. How wet.

Desdemona: She hasn't been dried for years or worries.

Othello: This humidity is a sure sign

Compliance and love …

She has a devil in her

He freaks out and sweats.

Othello, proving the passion of his nature, begins to "wind" himself with fictitious scenes of betrayal, not realizing that his thinking has already been broken:

… I was lying. Cuddling … It's an abomination. Shawl. Make me confess. Shawl. Make me confess and hang. No, first hang, and then force to confess. I'm trembling all over … (Falls unconscious).

How can one disagree with Iago's cynical statement: "This is how they catch gullible fools."

But the feeling of jealousy, as befits a disease, continues to grow, the jealous person already needs the voluntary recognition of Desdemona herself. (How can we not recall the processes of "voluntary recognition of the enemies of the people" in the thirties of the last century?)

Until recently, Othello, who loved his wife so much, no longer chooses secular expressions, but goes almost to the marketplace:

Tell me what your sin is, street creature, Say, you rabble, what have you done?..

You don't know, whore without shame

What have you done, what have you done?

After that, without waiting for "recognition", he first tries to strangle the young woman, and then stabs her with a dagger. Iago's wife, who did not have time to tell Othello about her husband's intrigues, states quite logically:

Oh, devil blind! But what was there to do

With such a wife, such a fool?

Othello remains to confirm this fact: "Oh, I'm a fool!" - and then commit suicide himself.

The cornerstone of the difference between ordinary jealousy (rivalry) and pathological jealousy is lack of evidence and groundlessness. It is not for nothing that psychiatrists call such morbid jealousy "an unfinished crime."

Alexander Pushkin argued that "Othello is not by nature jealous - on the contrary: he is trusting." But gullibility does not reach the stage of psychotic reaction and is unlikely to lead to murder. Unless it is the gullibility of an infantile and not very smart person.

Given the prevalence of this type of mental disorder, psychiatrists distinguish "Othello's syndrome" in psychopathology, by which they mean delirium of jealousy. In Shakespeare, the unfortunate Moor eventually realizes he was wrong. And with delirium of jealousy, it is not possible to convince the patient without resorting to the help of special treatment. He will only come to the conclusion that the "cheating wife" has already "agreed" with the doctor.