Alright, I've never posted in non-fiction, so I'm an amateur. Regardless of that--if you can bring yourself to disregard such a thing--I will tell you about my mess of an essay. I did not organize it and I wrote it in about thirty minutes. It is not edited nor is it particularly unified, so I accept any and all criticism I receive.
Anyhow, I wrote this for my college English class and I am unsure if I should turn it in or just use the generic one that I wrote last night. The prompt is this, "Samuel Coleridge says Iago was a victim of "motiveless malignity"; do you agree or disagree and why?"
Thanks for reading, darlings.
_______
Before things find themselves too bogged down in philosophical tom-foolery, Samuel Coleridge is an idiot. Meaning, he is either sorely mistaken, or sorely misunderstood. I would prefer to believe that such a worthy man would not sink into the silly confusion of forgetting that even insanity is reasonable, and so no one is truly “motiveless”. But I believe I should make clear what I speak of, since, in the last few sentences, it was rather vague. Mr. Coleridge, of indiscernible age, was said to have asserted that a certain Iago from the play “Othello” was possessed with “motiveless malignity”. Now, if nothing else, this seems a contradiction in terms. Either he was motiveless or he was malignant. If he was malignant, his motive was, essentially, malignancy. And if he was motiveless, he was sleeping in his grave and could not have possibly caused the trouble that he did. What must be concluded was that Coleridge simply had his words a little mixed up in his dear, little head. He could only have meant that Iago’s motive was purely malignancy, but that he [Coleridge] didn’t want to admit that this was a motive at all.
Yet, let us move along, and not bother with the mildly humiliating efforts of a slightly perplexed man. It seems appropriate to state at this point that I do not agree with Coleridge’s vaguely senseless description of a very horrible man. Like I deigned to state before, motiveless people are not motiveless by their own choice; they are just dead. There are no actions that have been discovered yet that do not possess their own, possibly secret, motive. Man is simply not capable of acting without a motive. When he kicks a stick with his bare foot, his motive was to occupy his foot while his thoughts wandered. When he starts spewing random facts about the state of Prussia in the thirteenth century, during an important business meeting, his motive is his own and I would need to speak with him personally to discover it. But don’t deny it; he had a motive, however difficult it may be to uncover. For all those lacking the thing called imagination, I dismiss you at this point and have no further need of your attention. Imagination is absolutely essential in examining anything, and I would rather not make a fool of myself arguing the point.
Oh, we must not tire of wondering at the malice of a frightening man such as Iago. With all good faith, I cannot bring myself to be fascinated by him--he is too base—but his broken character is enough for quite a few sessions of wondering. Why does he get such evil glee out of destroying silly lives? Allowing for the fact that there are too many reasons to count, let us begin with perhaps the most apparent one. Iago is that typical kind of man who is so bitter in his own self-created misery, that he believes he shall have no peace until he causes the whole world to be as horribly depraved as he. But why is he so miserable? comes our next question. He is miserable because he has not gotten what he believes he is entitled to; i.e. Cassio’s job. But why is he so proud that he does not trust the authority of his superior in the choice of a worthy man? Ah, there it is. Iago has discovered that nasty little bugger called Pride and has held it tightly. And then he has found its brother called Malice and its sister called Perverse Amusement, and he has held them both close to his rotting heart.
Iago’s reasons for attaching himself to the filth of vice are his own, and I will not bother delving into his past and finding his petty little rationalizations. They are not relevant. What most people tend to forget is that Iago’s “reasons”—for instance, “Othello is unjust and Cassio is proud, so I should destroy their lives”—are not worth looking at. Even if Othello were an entirely disgusting and worthless leader, Iago should not be able to morally, logically justify what he does. And so it is not about anything tangible; it’s all about his twisted mind; a mind that finds itself escaping its own responsibility with horrific distractions. I would never make the mistake of saying I could not understand Iago. I understand him perfectly. Who has not felt such rage that they would not perhaps imagine doing the things Iago has done? Or, if they have not felt such a rage, can they not imagine one? I dearly hope so. And so it appears that Iago’s most shallow motives are not motives at all, and so perhaps that is why Coleridge found himself in a dire confusion. He lost his way in the maze of perversion that was Iago’s pathetic mind. And getting lost is no crime; in fact, it can often be an exciting adventure that I shall decide to envy.
What have we discovered in the story of Iago’s supposed “motiveless malignity”? Have we not found ourselves imagining the contours of someone who has decided to painfully twist themselves into unrecognizable shape? into the shape of something that does not bother looking human. A confusing shape, that is. I believe we have concluded that Iago was far from motiveless; in fact, he was all motive--perhaps not reasonable motive; perhaps not thoroughly comprehensible motive, but motive all the same. Even the insane have their motives. It all comes down to really knowing someone. Once you truly know someone—which, in theory, is impossible—you will understand exactly why they did what they did. Even we are not always aware of our own motives, but unawareness does not imply the non-existence of the object we cannot see. The issue is never, “Was there a motive?” It is always, “Can we possibly discern the motive?” In Iago’s case, no; we cannot truly understand why he did what he did. We can only guess, which is what we shall continue doing, into the deepest, and most profoundly exciting corners of the earth.
