Honor in Othello and Hamlet Essay

Being one of the central themes in Othello and Hamlet, honor is used in precise strange ways by Shakespe atomic number 18. He has a way of showing how his characters potentiometer be very sizable or hold back a lack there of. He dis make ups how honor is interwoven with personal rectitude and how acts of attempting to keep a reputation can be confused with the acts of personal righteousness. belongly, he also displays how honor relates to the foresight seen by his characters. Honor can be connected to al approximately any actions made by any of the characters in these plays. He authenticly keeps the readers/viewers guessing at what the motivations are for all of his characters. I will take a look into these motivations and explain my thoughts on such things.In these plays, honor is very important to the characters. It is a driving force, of sorts, for much of what the characters do. Along with that, judgments made ab let on certain characters, by former(a) characters, are a lmost always based on honor. In Othello specifically, honor connects almost all of the actions and judgments throughout the play. Honor seems to be one of the main reasons Desdemona fell in love with Othello. Being much erstwhile(a) and having so many military accomplishments sent Othello into an honorable light in Desdemonas eyes. To me, that seems to be the touch on reason she fell in love with him, in the first place.His own character influenced her love thereafter, further initially, I believe it was solely his honor. Cassio is also attracted to this quality in Othello. His platonic love for Othello is based just about how honorable Othello has been in his life, prior to the end of the play. In Iagos eyes, however, Othellos honor means nonhing. He cannot comprehend why Othello got the job he has, while he is stuck in the same position. Iago gives the impression that Othellos honor is almost a negative thing in his eyes. Despite Iagos negative views, any judgment about Othe llo is based on how honorable he is. His port prior to the end of the play shows this honor as well.In opposition to the honorable basis of thoughts about Othello, many characters choose less(prenominal) honorary behavior and are viewed dishonorably by other characters. Iago is a prime example of this. non only do you see the lack of honor in quite literally everything Iago does, tho you stunner these negative thoughts about him as well. From Othello, you hear the sarcastically said honest Iago, and from Emilia, you hear many a complaint. Iagos unjust behavior even produces dishonorable behavior from Emilia. She makes it seem resembling she constantly cheats on Iago, because of his neglectfulness.Dishonorable behavior is just followed by much dishonorable behavior, in Shakespeare. This could not be more true when it comes to Hamlet. The entire play is based around the central occupation of greediness and revenge. The play starts mangle with the fact that King Hamlet has died . Right away, when Hamlet talks to the ghost of his deceased father, we find out that he was killed by his brother Claudius. This one event (not to belittle it) sparks a string of dishonorable behavior from Hamlet, who was once considered to be a very honorable intelligent young prince. Hamlets cunning, even destructive, behavior however, could be argued as honorable, to a point, by some. His actions are based on the need for justice, which most people take a shit indoors themselves. They are done in locate to avenge his fathers expiry and make right in the world. This could be argued to be a noble and honorable cause. It could be, unless I dont think it would necessarily carry much weight.Sure, the cause behind his actions are great, but the way he goes about achieving that cause loses much, if not all, validity. He tries to make right, but in the process of it all, he hurts Ophelia, which causes her to commit suicide, he mistakenly kills Polonius (with little or no remorse), and his actions lead to the death of almost all other characters. Hamlet should, of course, not be blamed entirely for these incidences. Obviously Claudius should mere(a) more burden when it comes to all of these deaths. In means of applying this theme of dishonorable behavior being followed by more of the same you could also argue that if Claudius had not killed his brother, than Hamlet may have never aim as dishonorable as he became. He was, after all, in school, away from the kingdom. Presumably, Hamlet could have married Ophelia and led an honorable life as king after the natural death of his parents. -When it comes to Shakespeares characters, there seems to be something missing Integrity. While characters may have some personal integrity within themselves, there doesnt seem to be many that are control by what is right, rather than driven for their own gains. Want of personal integrity lags far behind the want of reputation in these plays. theres an abundance of instances w here characters act with integrity, but few show this integrity throughout an entire play. A good example is Michael Cassio. For the first part of the play, to me, he seemed to have a lot of integrity. Despite his scrap after drinking, he felt terrible about it, and he wanted to make it up to Othello. It sounded like all he wanted was forgiveness from his good friend. That made him have a lot of integrity in my eyes. But in the end, hes seen visiting the prostitute and leading her along, for the fun of it.Last of all, foresight in Shakespeare appears to be a quality with positives and negatives. The two largest forms of foresight in these two plays would have to be that of Hamlet and that of Iago. In terms of Hamlet forgetting the terrible acts of violence and vulgarity that he pull in the spur of the moment, Hamlets foresight, when it came to Claudius, was very honorable. His use of foresight was to avenge his fathers death and to find justice in the world. Anything Hamlet did th at was dishonorable had nothing to do with foresight it had to do with his impulsiveness. In the other spectrum of things, Iagos foresight is unquestionably dishonorable. His ability to perceive how people will defend and what they will do in the future, while revered by Shakespeare the world over, is one of the most dishonorable instances in Shakespeare. His manipulation of people is only means of pitting them against each other in order to help himself in the future.After reading these plays, it is hard to decide whether or not honor can still be legitimately given to any character. In my eyes, Hamlet, Cassio, Iago, and Othello have all lost real honor. Sure, aside from Iago, the others have done honorable things, but I dont think I could attribute any of them honor fully. The only characters I would consider giving that to would be Desdemona (for trying to publish Othello at the end of the play) and possibly Horatio (for helping Hamlet discover find out about Claudius and choos ing to not die in order to tell his friends story). I dont think I could do that however, because these acts of honor do not serve entirely large parts of the plays.Honor is apparently a fickle thing. It will come and go in Shakespeares world. His plays make it very clear that he doesnt believe many people can be truly honorable. Every once in a while he will convince us that one of his characters has this quality through and through, but he then snags that away from us. Im convinced that, in these two plays, there is no truly honorable character. Some come close at moments, but spoils are constantly brought.