"His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift," Desdemona says of Othello; these paradoxes highlight Desdemona's determination to set things right. Ironically, it is this determination to "intermingle everything [Othello] does with Cassio's suit" that fuels Othello's jealousy, which is the ultimate cause of her fate. Had Desdemona not felt such a sense of justice or been good enough to advocate for a case in which she was not involved, she might have …showed first 75 words of 1928 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1928 total…remarkable willingness to respond, to be stimulated. Iago’s power, in fact, in the temptation-scene is that he represents something that is in Othello, in the same way that Desdemona had represented the good of Othello; the beauty, the eloquence. Iago’s unlocking of Othello’s inner craven represents Othello’s loss of the battle within; his malignity and baseness have conquered his purity and virtue – the “traitor within the gates” has been let out.)