The cries of the dying men remind Othello of his resolution to kill Desdemona. Again he regrets what he knows he must do. He must close her eyes, stop her looking at him, before he can kill her.
Again he stamps out love with overdone violence, conjuring up the image of killing her in her bed, but this mental picture begins to resemble the red and white strawberry-spotted handkerchief, the picture that drives him to madness. The bed in his mind is stained with lust, that is Desdemona's infidelities with Cassio, and will be spotted with "lust's blood" when he kills her in revenge.
In that instant, Othello pictures himself killing her with a sword, as Iago will kill Cassio with a sword. Othello will spill her blood on the white sheets, but this time the blood is not from the passion and lust of first love, but from the passion and lust of desperate murder. The further Iago sinks into villainy, the more Emilia's position has become equivocal. Put on the spot, she automatically backs up her husband, but the circumstances are more and more stretching her loyalty and producing an increasing tension based on her increased knowledge.
Sooner or later, Emilia will tell what she knows. For all her words of scorn about husbands, Emilia automatically sides with her husband in what she must know is a scurrilous attack on another woman.
She cries "fie upon thee, strumpet! In Bianca's eyes this is true, as all she is doing is standing by her own man, as Emilia is doing with hers. At this point, Iago feels a certain satisfaction. Iago is a "I don't want any loose ends" kind of guy. Logging out…. Logging out You've been inactive for a while, logging you out in a few seconds I'm Still Here!
They are joined shortly by Montano, Lodovico, Cassio, and Iago, who is being held prisoner. Othello stabs Iago, wounding him, and Lodovico orders some soldiers to disarm Othello. Iago sneers that he bleeds but is not killed. Seeking some kind of final reconciliation, Othello asks Cassio how he came by the handkerchief, and Cassio replies that he found it in his chamber.
Lodovico tells Othello that he must come with them back to Venice, and that he will be stripped of his power and command and put on trial. He reminds them of a time in Aleppo when he served the Venetian state and slew a malignant Turk. Lodovico prepares to leave for Venice to bear the news from Cyprus to the duke and senate.
In the first scene of Act V, we see the utterly futile end of Roderigo and his plans. Roderigo was first persuaded that he need only follow Othello and Desdemona to Cyprus in order to win over Desdemona, then that he need only disgrace Cassio, then that he need only kill Cassio.
Now, Roderigo, stabbed by the man who gave him false hope, dies empty-handed in every possible way. Roderigo is certainly a pathetic character, evidenced by the fact that he does not even succeed in killing Cassio. Because of this, Iago is forced to bloody his own hands, also for the first time in the play. Displaying a talent for improvisation, Iago takes the burden of action into his own hands because he has no other choice.
Neither Lodovico, Graziano, nor Cassio shows the slightest suspicion that Iago is somehow involved in the mayhem. But spotted sheets also suggests wedding-night sex.
As Othello prepares to kill Desdemona at the beginning of the final scene, the idea of killing her becomes curiously intertwined, in his mind, with the idea of taking her virginity. Ironically, despite being convinced of her corruption, part of him seems to view her as still intact, like an alabaster statue or an unplucked rose.
Furthermore, the reader may recall that the all-important handkerchief is dyed with the blood of dead virgins. The wedding sheets would prove one way or another whether the marriage was consummated, depending on whether they were stained with blood. After Desdemona wakes, the scene progresses in a series of wavelike rushes that leave the audience as stunned and disoriented as the characters onstage.
Astonishingly, Desdemona finds breath again to speak four final lines after Emilia enters the bedroom. She speaks another five lines before dying for good. Before he kills himself, Othello invokes his prior services to the state, asking Lodovico and the other Venetians to listen to him for a moment. At this point, he is resolved to die, and his concern is with how he will be remembered. As he continues, though, he addresses an important problem: will his crime be remembered as the fall from grace of a Venetian Christian, or an assault on Venice by an ethnic and cultural outsider?
Finally, he recalls a time in which he defended Venice by smiting an enemy Turk, and then stabs himself in a reenactment of his earlier act, thereby casting himself as both insider and outsider, enemy of the state and defender of the state. Othello identifies himself firmly with Christian culture, yet his belief in fate and the charmed handkerchief suggest ties to a pagan heritage. Despite the fact that his Christianity seems slightly ambiguous, however, Shakespeare repeatedly casts Othello as Christ and Iago as Judas or, ironically, as Peter.
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