Free Appearance And Reality In Macbeth And Othello Essay Example

The difference between appearance and reality has been a theme in literature for just about as long as people have been putting paper to pen and writing stories. In many of William Shakespeare’s plays, this is one of the more common themes, particularly in the comedies and tragedies. Macbeth and Othello are two Shakespearean tragedies that explore the difference between what central characters think they see and what is real, and the chaos that this difference brings to their lives.
In Macbeth, the gap between appearance and reality comes from two sources: the bottomless ambition that Lady Macbeth, and then Macbeth, feel as far as taking power in Scotland; and the seemingly random appearance of a crew of witches that appear to take more than a little amusement from the idea of deceiving people in such positions of power. There is nothing to suggest that the ghosts that Macbeth sees in the play are anything more corporeal than the manifestations of his own inner guilt for the murders that he has committed in the service of his own ascent to the throne. The same sort of hallucinations happen to Lady Macbeth, except they appear to take the form of blood that simply refuses to wash away from her hands, a symbol of the extreme guilt that she apparently bears for her part in the bloodbath. The witches give Macbeth prophecies (both true and untrue) to suggest that he should take certain actions in order to gain political ascendancy. These prophecies end up leading Macbeth into the worst sort of errors, leading one to wonder whether they represent some sort of existentialist view of the supernatural (which would have been centuries before Sartre) or some other iteration of a more than pessimistic philosophy. The feelings that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth feel appear to take on a supernatural form, but in large part the visions that they see are likely what Freud would have called manifestations of the unconscious, abetted by the malicious forces that some would call original sin and others would call temptation.
In Othello, it is primarily jealousy that leads people to mistake appearance for reality, especially in the case of the Moor himself. He has just married a youthful, gorgeous woman who deeply loves him, or at least is deeply in love with the idea of having eloped with an exotic man with a life filled with adventure. In either event, she is clearly faithful to him throughout the entire story, but some bizarre stratagem that hangs on the destination of an even more bizarre handkerchief that one of the most successful military leaders in the entire Mediterranean took from his mommy and still clings to for dear life convinces him that she has been cheating on him. He then takes the most final step of strangling her as her sentence for this adultery – for which there is no proof. What happened to the calm, cool general who trolled Brabanzio in front of the Duke of Venice? The worm of jealousy, which Iago plants in Othello’s heart, apparently eats its way all the way up to Othello’s mind and devours his ability to think logically, or even reasonably. The end is a reality that is much less happy than it should have been, just days after the Moor finally had found true love.