8/26/15

Text 01/2015: I think that Shakespeare wants to portray Othello as an open and trusting characters, so Othello confides in other character and doesn’t need to have a soliloquy and asides in order to inform the reader what he is thinking. One of his few soliloquies is when he is jealous about Desdemona “cheating” on him. In Act 3 Scene 3 (Lines 272-273), Othello says “ She’s gone, I am abused, and my relief must be to loathe her.” This shows the audience his change in character and emphasizes his insecurities, which is a necessity in order for Shakespeare to more fully develop Othello as the protagonist, but serves no other purpose. On the other hand, Shakespeare wants to portray Iago as a secretive character, so Iago cannot directly say things to the other characters. The audience needs to know Iago’s plans in order to understand the plot of Othello. Iago has soliloquies because it emphasizes his two faced character and tells the audience what he is really thinking.

Response: All forms of writing include a purpose, audience, genre, stance, media to consider, and a design to some extent. During my senior year of high school, I had to take an online test after studying Shakespeare’s Othello. Above is an excerpt that I wrote to my teacher in order to demonstrate my knowledge of the story. She has studied Othello multiple times and has her own opinions and different learning experiences associated with Othello. This influenced the way that I wrote this response because I had to present my views to her in a convincing way, so that she knows that I have learned the topic. Since my teacher was my only audience, I was very conscious of my grammar and word choice. This short position paper required a paragraph. It’s obvious that it is a response to a question formerly asked because it does that have an introduction and I begin by saying “I think.” In this piece, I am simply stating my opinion and the observations that I concluded throughout the story. I was a student proving to my teacher that I read the story Othello and that I am capable of answering questions that pertain to the text. It was submitted electronically. It has little structure because it was written solely to get my point across in a short amount of time. Since it was a short response, I was not able to fully realize all of the points that I could have potentially mentioned to make my conclusions more in depth.