Thoughts that keep my mind from straying–Maybe
Well, I suppose I owe “the world” another post. Or myself, at least. I don’t know if this is helping, but at least it’s keeping me momentarily occupied. And if I can avoid thinking about things for just one more moment, and then another, and then another, maybe I can convince myself that I’m slightly less depressed than I actually am. I don’t know if I’ve ever sounded this pathetic. I hope not, because this is pretty pathetic.
At the moment, I am sitting at school and freezing from the air conditioning. I could have left almost three hours ago, but I know if I go home I’ll just sit there and be sad. And I really don’t want to do that. So I thought I’d just hang out here, do homework, read, pretty much anything to keep my mind from wondering. I can’t say that it’s really working all that well, but it could be worse, I suppose.
Even Shakespeare reminds me of my own little tragedy. Brutus speaks to the crowd after he has killed Julius Caesar, one of his dearest friends, and says, “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.” I find that extremely appropriate right now. I loved Caesar immensely, but I could not tolerate tyranny. I decided for the liberty and freedom of Rome. And so here I am, without a Caesar, and I’ve forgotten how to live in Rome. I sure hope Marc Antony keeps his nose out of my business.
Othello sort of makes me cringe, too, lately. Poor Desdemona, always suspect to her husband’s doubts which were planted by Iago. I’ve read in criticisms that, as Shakespeare wrote them and described their background with each other, these two may not have come to such a tragic end had they never married. As the critic Irene Dash asserts, this is because of the roles imposed upon them within the confines of marriage. She aptly describes, with a close reading of details an average reader might overlook as insignificant within the text of Othello, the relationship these two had before they were married and contrasts it with the post-marital one. It becomes easy to see the differences and, despite the fact that Iago is the initial source of suspicion between the two, it also becomes evident that the roles marriage imposes on our Hero and Heroine is what ultimately undoes them. They were not unfaithful to one another, they did not lie to one another, but after wedding they assumed the traditional male-dominated roles ascribed to marriage in that time and, to an extent, even today. Desdemona was never anything but devoted to Othello, against the wishes of her father, and Othello thought the world of Desdemona, until Iago planted doubts in his head, doubts that he was not strong enough to shake. The characterization of their dominant/submissive roles in marriage is also inadvertently brought out by Iago. He tells Othello how she is having an affair, that she lies to him, which makes him feel as if his authority were being challenged. He feels threatened. Ultimately, however, Iago only exploits a crack that was already there. Had Othello not allowed himself to doubt, our tragic lovers would never have come to such an end.
