Symbolic Meaning of Light and Dark in Shakespeare’s Othello

“Civilization has fallen out of touch with night. With lights, we drive the holiness and the beauty of night back to the forests and the seas; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it.

Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of the night?

Do they fear the vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars?”

-Henry Beston - The Outermost House (1928)

It is generally understood that light stands for purity, hope, and new beginnings, while darkness often personifies fear, treachery, and the unknown. These associations may even be taken to the extremes of good and evil or hate and love. Humans subconsciously relate symbols such as light and dark to different meanings and suggestions, and authors take advantage of such relations to emphasize themes of good, evil, and even racism in their writings. In Shakespeare’s Othello, darkness and light are constantly at war for the reader’s sympathies and the images are used to paint a scene of pure, unyielding love, unadulterated hate, and merciless evil.

Racism is a prominent theme in Othello that is aided by light and dark images. From the first scene, Iago uses racial slurs to describe and demean his superior, telling Barbantio “an old black ram/Is tupping your white ewe” (Shakespeare, Act 1, Scene 1) while speaking of Othello’s elopement to Desdemona. In turn, the innocent and ultimately unfortunate Desdemona is made out to be fair and pure, even called an angel by Emilia after her death. “O, the more angel she/And you the blacker devil.” (Shakespeare, Act 5, Scene 2). It would appear that Othello’s wickedness has made him “the blacker devil”. With this imagery, the reader automatically judges darkness to represent bad and light to represent good. The author prays on subconscious prejudices and correlations to get his point across, using light and dark to accentuate his themes.

As the play progresses, the evil Iago wreaks havoc on the lives of those around him and the reader discovers new levels of his treachery. When all of his plotting comes together in the final act, dark truly eclipses light as Othello decides to “put out the light, and then put out the light,” (Shakespeare, Act 5, Scene 2) killing Desdemona in their bed. He says “put out the light” not only to describe killing her. The quote also encompasses the end of his devotion to her and the supposed loss of her purity. Having been deceived by Iago and his malicious intentions, Othello loses his respect for Desdemona, and maybe even his sanity. All of this loss is observed and put to rest with his putting out the light of Desdemona’s life. Othello again uses light in a metaphor, stating: “if I quench thee, thou flaming minister/I can again thy former light restore/ should I repent me. But once put out thy light/thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature/I know not where is that Promethean heat/that can thy light relume.” (Shakespeare, Act 5, Scene 2) He means that if he were to put out his candle, he would be able to relight it should he come to regret the decision. But if he makes the impossible choice to kill the woman he loves, he knows not by what miracle he would be able to bring her back. The symbolic light here is put out by Iago’s deceit and Othello’s jealousy, bringing a tragic end to this memorable play.

In his tragic drama Othello, William Shakespeare employs images of light and dark to exemplify the central themes of the play. Light represents innocence, love and goodness. Desdemona, the fair, angelic wife of Othello the Moor personifies all of the traits. Despite her absolute devotion and love for Othello, her goodness is not enough to spare her from the dark evil that is Iago. Darkness comes to symbolize malevolence, betrayal and hate as Iago’s jealousy yields to rage and he moves to destroy the lives of those he believes have wronged him. With light and dark constantly in conflict, Shakespeare uses the images to illustrate a wide range of emotions and themes, from bitter to jealousy to uncompromising love, to the most destructive form of hate.