Rhetorical Analysis Of Othello's Speech

by his rhetoric, which is in fact at work even during the speech in question, irrefutably suggests a certain kind of egotism. Also, his story’s evocation of pity, regardless of the extent to which such a reaction is genuine or partially a product of Othello’s self-deception, would naturally be essential to his self-idealization and the boosted self-esteem that would come along with that, as it would not present him as a racially “inferior” man who is not in a position to be feared and repulsed, but rather, to be worthy of one’s compassion and sympathy. It is also noteworthy that Othello’s capacity for poetic lyricism would of course also starkly countermand any preconceptions of him as being linguistically ignorant, of expressing himself with
animalistic crudeness, in accord with his race’s putative accoutrements. In tandem with that, this type of stylistically poetic, dramatic, but also grammatically formal rhetoric does not only actively dismantle prejudiced preconceptions and allow for the fashioning of a different kind of image of Othello, by virtue of its form, but also abets in further romanticizing the content of his tale by dint of its elements of repetition and imagery. From a thematic perspective, I would suggest that the nature of Othello’s speech, specifically with respect to his invoked, self-pronounced “pilgrimage”, is highly reminiscent of contemporaneous romance narratives.
More precisely, the early modern prose romance was invested in the medieval chivalric romance, where knights would go on marvelous adventures in order to fulfil certain quests, often concluding with their discovery of true love. Othello’s “story of my [his] life” (1286) indeed consists of such elements of “wondrous” adventures to the utmost, given his breathtaking overabundance of references to all “the battles, sieges, fortunes” that he has “passed” over an astonishing time scale, dating “from my [his] boyish days”, lasting until “th’ very moment that he [Brabantio] bade me [him] tell it”, all his perilous and “deadly” exploits in wondrous lands inhabited by man-eating “Cannibals” and “Anthropophagi”, and in such romantic and quixotic places as “vast” caverns (“antres”), barren “deserts”, and “hills whose heads touch heaven” (1286). In addition to his story resembling a romance tale of knight-errantry, Othello’s self-depiction significantly constitutes a story of theological normalization, in stark antithesis to the perception of black people as “godless” (Scot 97). This is shown through Othello’s self-reference as a man “sold to slavery” who was thereafter led to his “redemption”, in addition to his speech’s strident reflection of that, either consciously or
not, through this verbal outpouring of his grueling and life-threatening, thus arguably absolving, hurdles. Hence, this converts his journey into a “pilgrimage”, and in a manner automatically sanctifies and even elevates his story, as well as himself. This religious implication in Othello’s story that aims at the conceptualization and projection of an image of a contextually theologically sound self also harks back to, as well as confirms, the character’s internalization of the essentialist qualities of impiety and demonization that underscore non-whites. Echoing Iago’s and Brabantio’s previously mentioned jaundiced perception of Othello as a pagan, even devilish, heathen, it consequently results in upending them, as part of this wider self-fashioning rhetoric. Therefore, his tale constituting both a romance and simultaneously a redemption narrative, give rise to the argument that Othello has romanticized himself, with his so-called “egotism” and vanity deriving from his demonstrated internalization of his supposed inferiority, those “vices of my [his] blood” which “I [he] do[es] confess” (1286), and which would provide an explanatory premise for his need to personally perceive, as well as outwardly present himself, as an arrestingly romantic, and mainly redeemed, thus ideal, figure, thereby distancing himself from those very “vices” of a Moor.
Furthermore, Othello’s self-idealization, and chiefly, in this case, his vanity and ego, which are products, to a certain extent, of his internalized inferiority, are intimated in the speech in question through his commenting on the nature of love for Desdemona.
By stating that Desdemona “loved me [him] for the dangers I [he] had passed” and that he “loved her that she did pity them” corroborates Carol McGinnis Kay’s argument that the basis for Othello’s and Desdemona’s love “is the grand romantic picture of Othello that they both admire and pity” (265). Hence, Othello’s “love” for his wife derives from “the image of Othello that Desdemona reflects to him” (265), which is, I would argue, even more explicitly indicated by Shakespeare when he has Othello proclaim to Desdemona that he “does love thee [her]”, and “when I [he] love[s] thee not, chaos is come again” (1314). Although I would insist on approaching those hypothetical nature of the roots of the couple’s relationship with a non-absolutist attitude, considering the limited access the audience has to the two characters either in the form of revealing asides or an adequacy of mutual interaction in any of the acts, I concur with Kay’s point, in that Othello’s love for Desdemona is rather self-oriented, a mirror of his own desirable self-concept as a romantic warrior, contrary to Mose Durst’s rather simplistic perception of “Othello’s love for Desdemona”, namely as having “given his life its most profound meaning” merely
for what it is (Durst 103). Therefore, all things considered, this speech, a grandiloquent narrative of narratives the center of all of which is Othello’s self, by dint of its conventional poeticism, as well as its elements reminiscent of chivalric and redemption narratives, result in stripping the character of any preconceived notions of rhetorical as well as religious savagery and unrefinement, thereby idealizing both in his eyes and those of others. Moreover, his rhetoric’s revelations about the hypothesized basis of his relationship with Desdemona should not be seen