iago is one of shakespeare's best and most unrepentant
villains.he is the most hotly debated character of
the
play.he is traditionally seen as pure evil.critics
refer to
his villainy as "motiveless malignancy".iago's
reasons
for
his machinations are trifling and the results are
in
excess
of the reasons.his primary reason is that othello
bypassed
him and promoted cassio when he was a better and
more
experienced soldier.however,he goes on to other
reasons
that sound manufactured and flimsy.he says there
have
been
rumours of his wife sleeping with othello.the
rumour is
an
enigma in the play.there are some ambiguities
deliberately
left because shakespeare wanted to build suspense
in
it.another reason that he gives is that he is
jealous
of
desdemona.this is strange as,in the text,he has no
reason
to be jealous.it seems he invents this reason to
convince
himself more than anything else.in a soliloquy he
says
that
he is doing this for "sport and profit".that makes
iago
pathologically wicked,but this characteristic
doesnot
fit
his portrayal.also.iago makes money out of
it.roderigo
pays
him to break up othello-desdemona marriage.the way
othello
trusts iago blindly in the play,reveals that the
two
must
have been very close friends at some point of
time.
they
must have a very strong homosocial bonding which
critics
have called latent homosexuality.this bond gets
ruptured
with the coming of desdemona and that becomes
another
reason for iago's evil.this has happened in other
shakespearean plays like claudio and benedick in
much
ado
about nothing.another aspect is iago's
racism.although
its
not one of the reasons,but it is a tool through
which
he
engineers his plot.he victimizes othello through
his
feeling of otherness telling him that he is
the "other";he
doesnot understand venetians and venetian women.it
is
this
argument that finally goes home and othello starts
suspecting desdemona.the hero in this play is not
the
protagonist.it is iago who initiates the
action,directs
the
flow of the play and is its controller.generally
the
villain is seen as the other,but here,its the hero
who
is
the outsider;doesnot belong to venice,while iago is
a
venetian.