Abu

Motifs in Othello are not decorative extras. They are the quiet echoes that make the tragedy inevitable. Every year, when […]

Every year when I teach Othello, I ask my students, “Who here trusts Iago?” A few hands go up. I

Figurative language means words that say more than they literally mean. In Shakespeare, images don’t decorate emotion. They create it.

If I ask my students what destroys Othello, they usually say, “Jealousy.” I smile and say, “Yes, but jealousy needs

When I teach Othello, I tell my students this: monologues are Shakespeare’s X-rays. They let us see what the characters

When I teach soliloquies in Othello, I tell my students to imagine Shakespeare dimming the classroom lights and handing a

When I teach Othello, I always pause and ask my students a simple question: What if we watched this tragedy

In Othello, four major characters die: Roderigo, Desdemona, Emilia, and Othello. Most deaths happen in Act 5, and Othello ends

When I introduce Othello in class, I can almost see the question forming in my students’ eyes: What is the

I tell my students this every year: Othello is not just a tragedy about jealousy. It’s a tragedy about race