Othello Mind Map (A Level)

Iago resents Othello for promoting Cassio over him. Othello has secretly married Desdemona; her father Brabantio accuses him of witchcraft, but the Senate accepts the marriage and sends Othello to defend Cyprus.

A storm destroys the Turkish fleet. Iago gets Cassio drunk and into a fight, and Othello dismisses him.

In the central scene (3.3), Iago plants suspicion that Desdemona is unfaithful with Cassio. Emilia gives Iago Desdemona's handkerchief, which he uses as false proof.

Othello's language and self-control break down. He strikes Desdemona in public.

Othello smothers Desdemona. Emilia reveals the truth, and Iago kills her. Othello stabs himself; Iago refuses to explain.

A Moorish general, respected in Venice but an outsider. Noble and eloquent at first; Iago turns his trust and insecurity into destructive jealousy.

Othello's ensign, known to all as "honest Iago". A brilliant manipulator who gives several motives, none of them fully convincing.

Defies her father to marry Othello. Loyal and loving to the end, she is destroyed by suspicion she does not understand.

Iago's wife and Desdemona's companion. Cynical about men, she finally exposes her husband, at the cost of her life.

Cassio, the lieutenant, values his reputation above all. Roderigo, who wants Desdemona, is Iago's dupe.

Sexual jealousy drives the tragedy, but Iago's envy and resentment come first.

Othello is defined by others through his race, often in racist language. Critics debate how far he absorbs Venice's view of him.

"Honest" Iago is the least honest character, and the play shows how easily appearances deceive.

Cassio, Othello and Desdemona all depend on how others see them, which makes them vulnerable to Iago's lies.

Women are judged by their chastity and treated as possessions. Emilia's speech in 4.3 challenges this double standard.

• "I am not what I am" (1.1)
• "I hate the Moor" (1.3)
• "O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; / It is the green-eyed monster" (3.3)
• "Demand me nothing. What you know, you know" (5.2)

• "She loved me for the dangers I had passed, / And I loved her that she did pity them" (1.3)
• "Put out the light, and then put out the light" (5.2)
• "one that loved not wisely but too well" (5.2)

• Brabantio: "She has deceived her father, and may thee" (1.3)
• Cassio: "Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation!" (2.3)
• Emilia: "Let husbands know / Their wives have sense like them" (4.3)

A great man brought down by a flaw (hamartia), whose fall brings a reversal (peripeteia), a moment of recognition (anagnorisis) and a release of pity and fear (catharsis).

Written around 1603 to 1604, adapted from an Italian story by Cinthio.

Venice was a wealthy, ordered republic; Cyprus was a frontier against the Ottoman Turks. Leaving Venice, the characters leave order behind.

Unlike Shakespeare's other great tragedies, the conflict is private, inside a marriage, rather than about the fate of a kingdom.

Famously described Iago's search for reasons as "the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity".

A. C. Bradley (1904) saw Othello as a noble hero, destroyed by Iago's cunning rather than his own nature.

F. R. Leavis (1937) argued Othello's jealousy grows from his own self-regard. T. S. Eliot read the final speech as Othello "cheering himself up".

Postcolonial and feminist critics focus on racism, otherness and the treatment of women in the play.