Friday, November 13, 2009

11th Grade Gabe Weighs In on Othello

Gabriel Llanas

English 11

Ms. Tara Stewart

11/13/94

Desdemona: Prudish? Naïve? You Be the Judge

Everyone knows girls are better than boys. They’re way hotter and smarter, and they make the best English teachers in the world. Some girls, who are really into Shakespeare and are amazing teachers -- even though they just graduated from college two years ago -- are so incredible that they would make a young man do anything (ANYTHING) to be with them.

Desdemona is pure, beautiful and honest (much like some teachers I could name). After Othello has accused her of being unfaithful, he tells her to go home and wait for him and he will be by anon. Desdemona talks to her maid, Emilia, and it is clear she would never even think about cheating on Othello. She tells Emilia:

Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world? (4:3)

Emilia, who is married to the deceitful Iago, has an understandably more down-to-earth perspective on this:

The world’s a huge thing.

It is a great price for a small vice. (4:3)

And she continues:

-why who would not make her husband a cuckold to make

him a monarch? I should venture purgatory for’t. (4:3)

But Emilia rationalizes further and gets even more realistic about it a few lines later:

But I do think it is their husbands’ faults

If wives do fall. Say they slack their duties

And pour our treasures into foreign laps, (4:3)

Just for example, say you have an English teacher at a prep school in… I don’t know, somewhere in the Midwest, and her “boyfriend” was a law student at some Ivy League Nerdversity. Well, being that far away from his totally hot and awesome girlfriend would probably be hard for said hypothetical “boyfriend” and he’s probably pouring treasures into foreign laps even as I write this alone in my room without my shirt on. Is it fair that said hot English teacher shouldn’t have a little treasure poured into her lap as well?

I mean, Emilia is certainly open to it:

And have not we affections,

Desires for sport, and frailty as men have? (4:3)

All I’m saying is that heavenly goddess English teachers who smell sweeter than magnolia nectar and whose smiles make a young man’s heart hop scotch across the playground of desire deserve a little “sport” sometimes too. Wouldn’t you concur?

Desdemona’s pure and all that, and maybe we’re supposed to think she’s better than Emilia, but I think she’s naïve and a prude and boring. Emilia is the more honest and human of the two of them because like Eazy-E she knows everybody’s “gotta get a nut.”

Ms. Stewart, I mean if you were honest with yourself, don’t you think -- hypothetically -- that you would like to indulge in a teachable moment with a young, virile, energetic, soccer-playing gentleman with a head of ample wing-shaped hair if you found out that the giant nerd you’re “dating” was sprinkling his affection on other girls’ foreign laps?

In conclusion: If you would like to discuss this further, I will gladly stop by your room in Macintosh Hall anon. I have honors study hall this semester, so I could even drop in during the evening hours. I’ll bring my copy of Othello, some scented candles, and my ready, able and surprisingly large brain.



3 comments:

  1. Gabe. This is a fine paper. It makes me like you more:) You've got moxy, my friend. I'm catching up. Midway through Othello.

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  2. You reading them all too, haley?
    I'm reading the Taming of the Shrew next...

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  3. Thanks for the heads up on what's next. If not now, when? It's my life. It's now or never. I ain't gonna live forever.I just want to live while I'm alive. I'm pretty sure Bon Jovi like Shakespeare, too.

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