Journal 11Iago and the root of all evil

Today I would like to state my opinion about Iago’s motives for causing havoc in everyone’s life. In the discussion we had in class last Thursday, we came up with many possible reasons for it such as revenge for not getting the lieutenant promotion, maybe he wanted show Othello what it feels like for a person to mess with his girl, someone even stated that maybe he was gay and desired Othello himself. All these things can be backed up with info in the story, but Mr. B had the idea that I agreed with the most; he said what if Iago is just one of those people who causes trouble just because…. There is no evidence that he is one of these people stated, but we all know people like this and I think we are all like that at some point in time. Iago could have simply been very good at it that his hobby made such a big deal that a story was made from it. The twist behind my opinion that makes it different from Mr. B’s suggestion is that I think that is just how things got started and after things began to get complicated and require real thinking he was pushed by money. As he was doing his everyday routine getting under people’s skin he ran across Roderigo who was madly in love with Desdemona. At the same time he was already disappointed that he was denied the promotion. And while all this was going on he had no anger towards anyone nor did he have plans on getting anyone in trouble with anyone. The real trickery began when Iago was offered money from Roderigo and then things got serious and he began to game plan. He had to make a way to take every penny Roderigo, his new business partner possessed which he did because Roderigo sold all of his assets just to pay Iago. We mentioned in class how Iago tells the audience that he was looking for money in the opening conversation with Roderigo, and he brings it up many times throughout the story to prove his desires. Iago made things easy on himself by killing two birds with one stone, literally. He brought two situations that had nothing to do with each other and made it into one story; he made the person who beat him out of the job the same person supposedly getting in between Othello and his newly wedded wife. The genius behind the idea is while Cassio was getting played like a pawn he doesn’t even know. In fact nobody in the whole story knows they are being used and they all get a piece of Iago’s manipulations, but Cassio is the biggest piece to the operation. I think if it wasn’t for Roderigo offering money there would be no big plot. Iago would just still be bothering people for no reason at all and nobody would have died because he wouldn’t have had a reason to go as far as he did into other people’s lives.