Iago the Wicked
Iago is one of the most purely vile characters in the history of literature. Iago for the entire play devoted himself to tormenting and ruining the life of Othello because of immense hatred that he has for Othello. This extreme hatred for Othello is not fully explained, the reader can only guess to try to understand his motives as he refuses to tell of his motives. In the play “Othello the Moor of Venice” written by William Shakespeare the cause of Iago’s immense hatred of Othello boils down to four possible explanations, he is jealous, self-aggrandizing, racist, and may have a mental disorder.
In the play jealousy was a major reason for Iago’s hatred for Othello. It seemed that Iago was jealous of the love that Othello and Desdemona share with each other because he appears to be in a loveless marriage with his wife Emilia who he says nags him constantly when he says “ would she give you so much of her lips as of her tongue she oft bestows on me, you’d have enough”(Shakespeare II. i 100-102). Iago also is jealous that everyone sees him in such a good light like when Othello was put in charge to solve the issue with the turkish invasion while Iago is overlooked. Iago also seems to be annoyed of how good Othello and Desdemona are as people and that they are so perfect for each other which will lead to a good marriage, so he will try to destroy it which is described when he says,“O! You are well tuned now, but I’ll set down the pegs that make this music“(Shakespeare II. i 192-194).
The reader does not have to look very far to see how power hungry Iago is which drives him to do many of his deviance acts against Othello. Iago is well respected but seem to never get the position he desires which is to have Othello's job as the leader or at the very least be Othello's right hand man but was denied both of those jobs. A trait of Iago’s power hungry ways is that he must control everything he possible can almost like a puppet master, but once he...