Like Othello, Andrew Parsons had to cope with the morbid jealousy induced by his overzealous mindset. The victims of Othello and Andrew were never trying to break the hearts of their men, but were falsely viewed as unfaithful. Unfortunately Othello and Andrew saw the worst in the situation and took things into their own hands by killing them. Both the men love their spouses but their actions were misinterpreted. Andrew was told by Janee that she had “met someone else” and wanted to separate, sparking a jealous induced rage that resulted in her death. Othello and Andrew are put in the same difficult and stressful scene, and unfortunately are mistaken for cold blooded killers.

 
1. “Inman, recovering from his wound at the hospital, contemplates how the war has changed him into a broken, empty man, skeptical of all that he once held to be true. He longs to heal his spirit, and to do that he clings to the idea of Cold Mountain as a healing place.”

- This quote reveals how empty Inman feels after having to be in the hospital for such an extended period of time due to his wound on his neck. He knows that his character is shattered, and he uses Cold Mountain as his mental “rock” to try and combat his negative mindset.

“After a fierce day of fighting, Inman and a boy soldier lie under the stars on the battlefield, bodies all over the ground. Inman finds comfort in knowing that a particular star in Orion is called “Rigel,” but his companion says that is just man’s name for the star; only God knows what the star is really named. The boy means that men try to control their world, and when they do, they mess that world up with politics and wars. After all that Inman has seen in battle, he begins to wonder if the boy is right: knowledge is an illusion of control.”

-        For this quote, I believe it shows that Inman isn’t interested in fighting this war for people he doesn’t even know. He takes more of an interest in the things around him, and fascinates himself with things of nature to make himself feel better after fighting. Inman now begins to think about the true meaning of war and how it affects him and the people around him.

2.

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“Broken”- This is an adjective describing Inman, as his soul and character are broken due to his wound, as well as he questions his own self worth when he is fighting in the war. 

 
1. “At the first gesture of morning, flies began stirring. Inman’s eyes and the long wound at his neck drew them, and the sound of their wings and the touch of their feet were soon more potent than a yardful of roosters in rousing a man to wake.”

-        This quote describes how primitive the medical care was that the protagonist had to deal with. Since this is during the time of the civil war, flies would get at wounds and therefore make the wounds infected. It describes how helpless the protagonist is, by not being able to swat away the flies due to his wound on his neck.

“Inman had taken his own during the fighting outside Petersburg. When his two companions pulled away his clothes and looked at his neck, they had said him a solemn farewell in expectation of his death.”

-        This quote outlines how Inman was put into this sensitive and meditative state in the hospital. Where everyone is expecting him to die, but he isn’t and wont give up on life. He starts to look deeper into the beauty of nature and notice things he never did before.

2.

Object #1: The seed: As Inman’s wound started to slowly and progressively heal, things would start to surface and come out of it. One of these things was an unknown seed/pit that he had no idea where had came from. This gave him tormenting nightmares (seed growing inside of him) and sets the tone on Inman’s dark and confused mindset.

Object #2 The damp fly swatter made of horse hair: One thing that bothers Inman the most is the constant annoyance of flies. He needs the fly swatter to get the flies off of him and his wound. The dampness of the swatter really portrays how damp and musky the environment he’s in really is

Object #3 Soured sheets underneath Inman in the hospital: During the civil war, lots of beds were used for the sick and wounded. There was high amounts of men and women coming and going in a very short time period. So the sheets were never cleaned. Just like Inman’s conscience. It has been tainted by war and plagued by the memory of soldiers being killed.

Object #4 Musket Guns: The guns everywhere around Inman portray the environment around him by being the symbol of war. War is everywhere around him and the gun reminds of him of the atrocities of war every time he sees one.

 
What aspects of general themes from Cinthio's Hecatommithi would make an interesting adaptation into Othello on stage?

I think an interesting aspect that should be introduced is the extreme jealousy expressed and portrayed by almost all the characters and how they deal with the unique situations they are in. As well as the unending and contagious love between Othello and Desdemona.


What ending do you think Shakespeare chose, Othello kills himself or is killed by torture after banishment?

I predict Othello would kill himself in the end. 
 
In The Wire, a police officer expresses his views on the way police are being hurt and killed for things that are petty in the grand scheme of things. He describes the way people who want to drink in public would just put their liquor in a brown paper bag, and that that gave the police an opportunity to perform real police work. However, when it comes to drugs on the street “there is no paper bag for drugs”. I strongly believe that police officers should not be put in the line of fire for something that isn’t even worth it. This is a powerful argument because a fellow police officer was shot and killed for “3 vials” of drugs; something that isn’t worth dying for.

 
In Daniel J. Solove’s article “Why ‘security’ keeps winning out over privacy”, he argues how the government is so paranoid about security that they are virtually never allowing citizens to have privacy. Daniel discusses how insane it would be to have your biometric identity stolen. This resonated with me because imagine having someone steal your fingerprint, retina scan, or even DNA. This would be catastrophic if the government was to have the citizens’ leaked out to other people or organizations. I agree with Daniel completely when he says we have to be careful when the system of biometric security “fails”; there would be chaos.

 
In Stephen Fry’s open letter to the Prime Minister, M Rogge, Lord Coe and members of the IOC, he blatantly calls out the actions of the Russian Government regarding the discrimination of the gay community. He goes to the extreme of comparing these events to the atrocious reign of Adolf Hitler, who isolated and persecuted the Jewish community. Stephen compares Putin and Hitler directly which shows how strongly he feels about these actions.


In a way, Stephen is overreacting. The holocaust and leadership of Adolf Hitler was one of the most dark times in the world’s history. Even though the events in Russia regarding the gay community are related, the reign of the fuhrer is not to be compared to. Now, he isn’t overreacting because I believe that Stephen has a point when he says “an absolute ban” on the games is essential; since the spirit of the Olympic Games is for countries of the world to come together to celebrate the spirit and peace of sport.