Top 5 Most Evil Charachters in Literature pt. 5; Iago

Save the best for last indeed.

Iago is till this day, what I consider the greatest villain in all of literature. He is in many ways the very first portrayal of, or at least the best earliest of the most remembered, a classic psychopath in literature. He is Shakespeare’s most sinister villain, only rivaled by Lady Macbeth and Edmund from King Lear. Iago is a Machiavellian schemer and liar, expertly manipulating all the characters in the play, and most notably Othello himself, while maintaining his reputation as an honest and decent advisor. His cunning is very little rivaled in literature. He is even referred to in the play as “Honest Iago”, denoting that not only do other people believe his lies, but they often think of him as the person most worthy of their trust. Shakespearean critic A.C. Bradley has said, “Evil has nowhere else been portrayed with such mastery as in the evil character of Iago.”

For those of you whom aren’t familiar with the play, well first off, get familiar, to me it’s his greatest achievement, a massive entangled web of lies and hatred all stemming around the relationship between Othello, the novel but corruptible soldier, and Iago, the manipulative and sadistically jealous advisor. Iago and Othello are longtime soldiers who have fought together for years. At the beginning, Iago tells the audience he has been unfairly passed over for promotion to lieutenant to Cassio. Iago plans to have Othello demote Cassio, and eventually cause Othello’s total destruction. Iago does have an ally in Roderigo, a dim-witted and easily-fooled insignificant, who helps Iago under the false pretenses that once Othello is gone, Othello’s wife Desdemona will be with Roderigo.

There is no one able to lie so masterfully as Iago in all of literature. First, he sets into motion a drunken brawl that ensures Cassio’s demotion, and begins on his real scheme. He will leas Othello to believe Desdemona is sleeping with Cassio. He cons his wife, Emilia, into stealing a handkerchief that Othello had given her, and tells Othello that he had seen it in Cassio’s possession. Othello suitably flies into maddening jealousy, and Iago tells him to hide behind the curtains while he talks to Cassio. He leads Cassio into a rather explicit conversation about Cassio’s mistress, Bianca, but leads Othello it is about Desdemona. Othello is stricken with grief, and orders Iago to murder Cassio. Instead, he lets his ally Roderigo fight Cassio, and murders Roderigo while Cassio is only wounded. Iago’s plans imminently succeed when Desdemona is murdered by Othello. Nevertheless, Iago’s wife brings his treachery to light and he is arrested at the end of the play.

The most study of Iago has had to deal with his motives, and why he felt such need to wreak such horrible havoc on the other characters’ lives, and many scholars felt he did this for no real reason other than that he good, making him a classic misanthropic sociopath. Samuel Taylor Coleridge described Iago’s motives as “motiveless malignity”, meaning he sought to destroy the other characters for no personal gain. In Act 1, Iago presents his motives as bitterness over being passed for promotion and his racist hatred over Othello, a black man, being with Desdemona, a white woman. But, many would seem to find these excuses to little more than classic sociopathic rationalizations and his real reason is his supreme confidence in his ability to destroy Othello and escape arrest or suspicion. Iago only presents his true evil nature in his asides to the audience, and presents himself as charismatic, witty, and charming to the other characters, also hinting at a sociopathic nature. He even offers sound advice to both Othello and Cassio. In any case, there are few characters like Iago, and he is very much a metaphor for the destructive nature of jealousy itself. We are never told what Iago is like before the play, and due to his status as celebrated soldier he was most likely heroic, but his ambitions turned to human destruction driven by petty jealousy. He is without guilt, and revels in the mayhem he has caused. Some say that he is a representation of the darker side of Othello himself, that little voice in the back of our heads telling us that our lovers don’t really love us. He is a manifestation of human hatred and malignity, and this is why he is the greatest evil in all of literature; he is an evil we all can identify with.