For this assignment, analyze the play by focusing on one of the following characters: Cassio, Desdemona, Othello, or Iago. Explore the motives, emotions and circumstances of the character you choose, and his or her relationships with all the other significant characters in the play. Try to give your reader a good sense of why things play out as they do. Each of these characters has significant interactions with all the others, and you will end up discussing them all no matter which one you choose to focus on. But try to explain what happens in Othello by following the trajectory of a single character throughout the entire play. As always, use short but effective quotations from the play to point out significant words and actions, but focus mainly on your explanations of what the words and deeds mean and why we should agree with your analysis.
To cite the text, place Act, Scene, and Line numbers in parentheses at the end of your quotation. Example: “Your quotation here” (1.3.5).
