Honor in Othello and Hamlet Essay

Being one of the central themes in Othello and crossroads, discover is used in in truth strange ways by Shakespeare. He has a way of showing how his sources washbasin be very ripe or deport a lack in that respect of. He displays how value is interwoven with personal integrity and how acts of attempting to keep a reputation ass be confused with the acts of personal integrity. Lastly, he also displays how value relates to the apprehension seen by his characters. Honor can be connected to almost every(prenominal) actions do by any of the characters in these plays. He really keeps the readers/ viewing audience guessing at what the motivations are for all of his characters. I will engage a look into these motivations and explain my thoughts on such things.In these plays, approve is very important to the characters. It is a driving force, of sorts, for ofttimes of what the characters do. Along with that, judgments made almost certain characters, by other characters, are alm ost unceasingly based on honor. In Othello specifically, honor connects almost all of the actions and judgments end-to-end the play. Honor seems to be one of the main cogitates Desdemona fell in drive in with Othello. Being much older and having so many a(prenominal) military accomplishments direct Othello into an true(p) light in Desdemonas eyes. To me, that seems to be the sole reason she fell in love with him, in the first place.His own character influenced her love there subsequently, unless initially, I believe it was solely his honor. Cassio is also attracted to this pure tone in Othello. His platonic love for Othello is based around how honorable Othello has been in his life, prior to the end of the play. In Iagos eyes, however, Othellos honor substance nothing. He cannot comprehend why Othello got the job he has, enchantment he is stuck in the same position. Iago gives the impression that Othellos honor is almost a negative thing in his eyes. Despite Iagos negativ e views, each judgment about(predicate) Othello is based on how honorable he is. His carriage prior to the end of the play shows this honor as well.In ambition to the honorable basis of thoughts about Othello, many characters choose less unearned demeanor and are viewed dishonorably by other characters. Iago is a premier(a) example of this. Not still do you see the lack of honor in quite literally everything Iago does, but you witness 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 opprobrious behavior even produces dishonorable behavior from Emilia. She makes it seem exchangeable she constantly cheats on Iago, because of his neglectfulness.Dishonorable behavior is exclusively followed by more than dishonorable behavior, in Shakespeare. This could not be more true when it comes to crossroads. The immaculate play is based around the central personal credit line of gree diness and revenge. The play starts off with the fact that King Hamlet has died. powerfulfulness away, when Hamlet talks to the ghost of his deceased acquire, we find out that he was killed by his brother Claudius. This one event (not to belittle it) sparks a get of dishonorable behavior from Hamlet, who was once go finisheded to be a very honorable intelligent young prince. Hamlets cunning, yet destructive, behavior however, could be argued as honorable, to a point, by some. His actions are based on the fate for justice, which most people permit within themselves. They are done in order to avenge his fathers death and make right in the valet. This could be argued to be a noble and honorable cause. It could be, but I dont bet 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 border 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 bare more shoot down when it comes to all of these deaths. In means of applying this theme of dishonorable behavior beingness followed by more of the same you could also argue that if Claudius had not killed his brother, than Hamlet may admit never become as dishonorable as he became. He was, after all, in school, away from the kingdom. Presumably, Hamlet could rich person 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. art object characters may have some personal integrity within themselves, there doesnt seem to be many that are driven by what is right, rather than driven for their own gains. Want of persona l integrity lags remote behind the want of reputation in these plays. Theres an teemingness of instances where 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 dispute after drinking, he tangle 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, farsightedness 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 committed in the spinal column 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 that 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 contradict 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 uphold 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 save Othello at the end of the play) and perhaps Horatio (for helping Hamlet discover find out about Claudius and choosing 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 behave entirely large parts of the plays.Honor is apparently a explosive 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 convert that, in these two plays, there is no truly honorable character. close to come close at moments, but spoils are constantly brought.