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“Ethics does not solve problems, it structures them,” writes literary critic Geoffrey Harpham. With the help of theorists like Harpham, Iris Murdoch, Richard Rorty, John Guillory, Michael Eskin, Emmanuel Levinas, Michel Foucault, and others, our course has explored the intersection between the literary and the ethical, focusing on a key distinction between ethics—the matrix in which we consider choice between competing goods—and morality, the act of choosing one thing instead of the other possibilities. We have wondered if literature is distinctively suited to engage us in ethical consideration: whether by allowing us to experience imaginatively characters’ personal decision-making over against conventional morality, by holding up to us the mirror of critical self-assessment, or by bringing us face to face with the claims of the other. We have felt literature foster our own empathy.  And we have noted, with Harpham, that the link between ethics and literature “is notoriously difficult to describe.” These presentations confront that challenge.

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 ABOUT

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Novels

Othello: The Moor of Venice


        Othello has persisted over the course of several centuries as one of Shakespeare’s most prevalent tragedies in regards to popular culture. The play depicts moments in the life of Othello, the Moorish general of the Venetian army, and his clandestine marriage with the beautiful Venetian debutante, Desdemona.

        As Othello and Desdemona attempt to, and temporarily succeed in combatting the disapproval from Brabantio, Desdemona’s father, they are faced with the deceptive and malevolent Iago, who retaliates after not being appointed Othello’s second in command. After being sent to Cyprus for military purposes and falling victim to Iago’s malevolence, Othello, Desdemona, and several other prominent characters are fatally overcome with feelings of betrayal, jealousy, hate, and a deep desire to be loved and respected.

The Handmaid's Tale

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         In the wake of a toxic pollutant that rendered a vast amount of the population infertile, the Republic of Gilead overthrew the government to manage and solve the crisis. Their vision for a new order possesses a specific rewriting of societal rules that not only reduces women to their reproductive potential, but feeds the problematic ideals of a patriarchal system.

      We experience Gilead through the eyes of Offred, a Handmaid in the house of the Commander and his wife, Serena Joy, who has had her identity revoked and freedoms stolen. As a Handmaid enduring this dystopian society, she is no longer allowed to read, speak freely, or have any choice in the matter. Worst of all, her role as a Handmaid reduces her to a faceless object that exists to produce children for elite members of society that are unable to bear children. Stripped of their names, lives, and identities, Handmaids are women whose only value lies in their fertility. Offred endures the disturbing reality of her mandated and reduced life while desperately grasping at her memories of the family she once had, the wife she once was, the child she once held. As a means of survival, she may choose to assimilate and normalize the inexorable suffering the new theocracy that abuses and delegitimizes women, or she can decide not to let the bastards get her down.

The God of Small Things

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The God of Small Things is the debut novel by author Arundhati Roy. Set in Kerala, India, in the late 1960’s, the narrative follows the experiences of twins Estha and Rahel as they navigate a traumatic childhood, and a family as it attempts to cope and heal. After the arrival of their beloved cousin Sophie Mol from Britain, the twins feel pushed aside. The adults surrounding the twins are all dealing with ghosts from their own pasts, and Roy interweaves these memories of the past with the present. The novel comes to a boiling point with the death of Sophie Mol, after an accidental drowning set in motion by a series of events involving each member of the family. Equal parts the story of a family drama forbidden love, and a changing social landscape, The God of Small Things explores the way events can spiral and lives are changed based on a culmination of both small and large moments.

Beloved

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Toni Morrison’s, Beloved, is a story about a former slave, Sethe, as she tries to readjust to life in a, free, post-slavery America. Having experienced firsthand the atrocities associated with slavery, her sense of identity is broken, where she is haunted by the actions she had to perform in order to survive. As the story unfolds, her memories are drawn out through her interactions with various characters, where she has to learn to confront and accept her past. Only once she has done this, will she be “free.” But, when a strange woman, Beloved, appears, Sethe’s past life collides with the present, creating a story filled with scenes that are both shocking and beautiful exploring themes of love and relationships, trauma, memory, and identity.

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Literature and Ethics: A Capstone Presentation

Tanetta Kelley is a final semester Senior at Guilford College. Her major is English with a minor in Human Resource Management. While at Guilford College, Tanetta has written numerous articles for the Guilfordian (the campus newspaper).Tanetta’s graduation goals are to obtain a certification in English as a second language and to become a Teacher of English in a foreign country-- she has her sights set on South Korea and Hong Kong.

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"The Juxtapositions of Social Stigmas and Family Immorality"

The idea that we are all products of our home life and upbringing is the key concept here. In the novel The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy the main characters being the twins Rahul and Estha are depicted as having a very strained and troubled childhood. As a result there is never an opportunity within the story wherein these characters are shown as developing into happy healthy adults. Using Humanities scholar Geoffrey Galt Harpham's essay “Ethics” as the source of tying in the ideals of moral and ethical laws that governs our lives as humans and drives our navigations within society. Including Harpham is to help bring in the focus towards the why we do what we do as humans beings, as well as how we tend to deal with adversities according to the way in which we were raised. The main focus was on moral laws that we often follow as individuals based on the substance (or lack thereof), that is ingrained in us as youths.

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 SPEAKERS

Jenny Carratello is a student at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC. She is majoring in creative writing, because storytelling has been a passion of hers since before she was old enough to read or write. She loves stories of all kinds, but her favorites are the kinds with spaceships. When she isn't reading and writing, she enjoys playing the piano, taking long walks, and watching movies and TV shows with her cat.

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"The Definition of 'Us': Solidarity in The Handmaid’s Tale"

 

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood follows Offred, a first-generation Handmaid, as she navigates life under the patriarchal, fundamentalist regime of Gilead. Richard Rorty suggests that to increase solidarity we must broaden our definition of “we.” He goes on to claim that the way to achieve this is to recognize people we think of as “other” have suffered pain and humiliation just as we have. Yet this is not what happens within the novel. Instead, women narrow their definition of “we.” They find solidarity only within the groups that Gilead has forcibly assigned to them, and many of them actively oppress each other as they cling to what little power they still have.

Katlin Crooks is a senior majoring in English and secondary education studies. After she graduates, Katlin hopes to teach English in a foreign country. While she currently resides in Jamestown, North Carolina, she calls many places her home. In her spare time, Katlin enjoys traveling, reading, going to the movies, discovering new music, buying secondhand books at her local library, and relaxing on the beach in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

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"Othello and the Ethics of Friendship and Marriage"

Shakespeare’s Othello is particularly successful in presenting the many perplexities or ethical dilemmas of both marriage and friendship. Through various relationships, Shakespeare constructs and presents these ethical dilemmas, provoking within his readers a sense of ethical curiosity and consideration. As a tragedy, Othello succeeds not only in guiding readers towards ethical inquiry, but also in encouraging solidarity and assisting us in negotiating, and potentially answering, the two incommensurable questions that dominate ethical inquiry: “how ought one to live?” and “what ought I to do?”

Mae Wood is a senior at Guilford College where she studies English with a writing focus, while additionally studying music as her minor. She is the Executive Copy Editor for Guilford’s Scholastic Award-winning newspaper, the Guilfordian, and has high hopes of eventually pursuing a career in music journalism and an immense interest in social work. She also works as a music manager for Guilford’s radio station WQFS, 90.9 FM.  She enjoys creative writing, whether it be short stories or poetry, and performing a vast array of music with her guitar and voice.

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"The Ethical Discourse of (M)others and Solidarity in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale"

In the Republic of Gilead, it is firmly decreed that everything, excluding approved dialogue by the new regime, be left unsaid and unread in the case of all women. Consider this a cordial invitation to remove the winged headdress that exists to conceal defining details and mask the reality of the volumes this novel speaks about female autonomy, solidarity, and the complications of a patriarchal, totalitarian government. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale invites readers to engage in ethical discourse that challenges one to consider the reason for strong reactions to how a corrupt system is capable of relinquishing their own humanity in order to forcefully revoking the humanity of their citizens. This dystopian tale is told through the eyes of a Handmaid, a woman only provided any legitimacy in society because of her ability to reproduce. As a result of a toxic pollutant that rendered a massive percentage of the population infertile, women were separated into different classes that defined how they were treated, what they wore, where they lived, and what they were expected to do. Through the exploration of different philosophical ideologies and ethical discourse in the discussions of Richard Rorty and Emmanuel Levinas, I will explore the concept of “othering” as a means of highlighting the revoked identities of women in The Handmaid’s Tale, how solidarity can be achieved through mutual suffering, and the limitations imposed upon language that both complicate and disable individual autonomy.

Briana Rumley is a CCE candidate for teaching licensure at Guilford College. She earned her B.A. in English from UNCG in 2011 and hopes to work as a high school English teacher in the future. In her spare time Briana enjoys reading, baking, and playing with her dog, Finn.

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"Forced Selfhood and the Ethics of Empathy as Portrayed in Toni Morrison’s Beloved"

Sethe’s subjection to violent physical abuse and sexual assault at Sweet Home destroys her ability to form a bond with her infant daughter, Beloved, and her ability to mother her surviving children. By eliminating Sethe’s ability to be a proper mother, depriving her of the act of mothering, the brutal schoolteacher inflicts psychological trauma from which Sethe cannot recover; trauma that encourages her decision to kill her infant daughter. Being  forced to confront herself within her child, the act of killing is Sethe’s attempt at freeing herself from the bonds of slavery. At the same time, she holds her daughter, Beloved, in a different kind of slavery; a slavery of being confined to a pre-verbal infant indefinitely. Both suffer forced selfhood by being involuntarily pushed into a state of Otherhood.

Regina Richbourg-Gardner is in her senior year as a WGSS and English Major. She works as a freelance Graphic Designer and was awarded the Guilford College 2017/18 Bonner Hunger Fellowship. She is married to Donnie Gardner, who is also a student at Guilford and has two children, Courtney 26, a Guilford College Senior and Zachary 22. Regina is the co-founder of Guilford College ROAR, Reaching Out for Animal Rights, a student club that focuses on animal rights.

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"A Fate Worse Than Death"

The objective of this paper is to discuss Richard Rorty’s concept that literature has the unique ability to shift the reader’s perspective to be able “to see more and more traditional differences ... as unimportant when compared with similarities with respect to pain and humiliation”. In this paper I will utilize Rorty’s concept to examine a central question from Toni Morrison’s text Beloved, “Did Sethe do the right thing”? I found this text could engage readers in situations which historically are known as accurate but personally have not experienced. By engaging with this text, the reader can experience emotional turns driven by the troubling ideas presented. Morrison has crafted this story so that the reader’s ability to emotionally connect with characters works to prove Rorty’s concept.

Patrick Cassidy is a student at Guilford College. His major is English. He was born in New York; go Yankees! He moved down to Greensboro in 2006, and graduated from Grimsley High School in 2008. His favorite things to do are walking his dog and watching movies, especially classics like Abbott and Costello and the 3 Stooges. Patrick is keeping an eye on the Panthers, hoping they can eventually bring the big game home. We know they can get there, the question is will a Super Bowl win be in their future anytime soon?

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"Case of a Shadow of Doubt in Othello"

What is catharsis, how do we apply it to the text we read? What claims of the other? Man is probably the only creature on this Earth who has a claim to knowing right from wrong, yet it seems that we even fall victim to that of having our own ethical principles compromised. Some of us are able to aspire to so much more then what we already are, but waiting for us on top of every ladder of success is a snake. A snake who will claim to be your friend, but is actually only there for one purpose. To watch you self-destruct after it tags you with one bite. The best victim for these snakes are those who have a shadow of doubt cloaked about themselves. Every advantage they can use to manipulate others against their better natures, they will do so. Aristotle would view this as our catharsis of the character of Othello, and the tragedy that be falls him towards the end of the play do to the association of Iago.

Emma Ross is a senior Creative Writing and Environmental Studies double major, with a minor in religious studies from Massachusetts. She works for the on-campus student run coffee shop, The Greenleaf Coffee Co-op, and is the editor for the literary magazine, The Greenleaf Review. In her spare time, she enjoys eating mac and cheese, walking on the beach and in the woods, and binge watching cooking competitions. 

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"Ambulatory Chalices"

What makes a parent? Is it genetics? Is it the people who raise us? What if the people who raise us have conceived us through violence? Do these conceptions change? In my presentation I unpack how the novel addresses the following main questions: How does the novel look at the use of women’s bodies; how does this objectification interfere with emotional attachment; how does reproduction create power dynamics? I argue that The Handmaid’s Tale explores these ethical dilemmas surrounding surrogacy, allowing readers to experience situations in a narrative form, thereby exposing the underlying conceptions and understandings of the human body. ​

Jonah Woodstock is a senior, this year. he’s studying Creative writing and film. In his free time he enjoys taking naps in the sunshine in the middle of the woods; eating a meriod of the world’s finest quinines both real and surreal; and both expanding and pushing the concept of both reality and space-time in his travels though out time and space via wormhole.

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"The Handmaid’s Tale: Ethics, Morals, and Loss of Identity"

In this paper I examine the definition between morality and ethics, bringing in articles from Richard Rorty, Irving Louis Horowitz, and Geoffrey Galt Harpham in order to find a definition for ethics as an extension of social code and morality as an extension of one’s personal code.  It dissects The Handmaid’s Tale by Margret Atwood taking into account the main character (Offred) and her actions she took within the book given her dystopian surroundings. Using the definitions as well as bringing in some outside articles on the novel, I discuss the ways the novel put’s Offred into situations where she herself must question her own ethics and morality and how this allows the reader to engage in their own such questioning; as well as explore and explain the thematic of loss of identity present throughout the novel which only further obscure Offred’s true motives.

Charles Meyer is a senior at Guilford College, majoring in English Studies with a minor in Music. Outside of school, he plays guitar and writes original music in two metal bands based out of Raleigh, North Carolina, called Septicemic and Antenora. When he graduates, he plans to continue pursuing music, hoping to tour and travel the country performing for those who will listen.  

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“Understanding the Other Through the Experience of Empathy”

Sethe and Paul D’s interactions together in Beloved, where they actively show empathy for each other, allows for them to form an understanding of the other, where the other is being put into ethical consideration. This relationship allows for Morrison’s readers to “feel” for these characters, where they are shocked and appalled of the traumatic experiences that Sethe and Paul D have gone through. Though they are not necessarily relatable in the sense that the readers have firsthand experience of slavery, Morrison’s readers are still able to identify with Sethe and Paul D’s sufferings, where their experience of pain and humiliation through man’s capacity to be evil led to the loss of a face, or an identity. This allows Morrison to take  her readers on a journey where Sethe and Paul D’s empathetic interactions lead to the reader’s own experience of empathy, where they subsequently form an understanding of the other.

Nate McManus is currently a senior at Guilford College where he majors English and Media Studies with a minor in Education Studies. Nate finds inspiration in smooth jazz, James Baldwin, & flocks of seagulls. During his time here, Nate has been a Bonner Scholar and Site Coordinator at the Bonner Center for Community Service & Learning. In his spare time, Nate likes playing ultimate frisbee, listening to funky music, & scrapbooking.

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"White Dirt, White Noise"

In Beloved, it becomes apparent the influence and power codes of ethics have on many of the black characters in the novel. The everyday struggle between one own’s personal, moral code and society’s broader, social code plays a hand in a character’s identity, personality, and decision making throughout Beloved. For the impoverished and/or enslaved in Beloved, this struggle weighs heavy on their mind due to the dark cloud of what is right and wrong. This cloud, also known in Beloved as white dirt, represents the institutionalism and oppressive nature white people had over black people during and after slavery. With the social code strongly waving in favor for whites and emphatically against blacks, decisions and choices are not as simple as right and wrong and Beloved shows us first hand.

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T h e o r i s t s

Geoffrey Galt Harpham (1946-     ),

an American Humanities academic who is currently a senior fellow at the Kenan Institute at Duke University. For many years until recently Harpham has served as President and Director of the National Humanities Center.

        Harpham is widely known within the world of academia for encouraging the interlinking of the study of Humanities with the studies of Natural and Social Sciences. An accomplished writer of scholarly material, he has 10 books credited to his name, Shadows of Ethics, Duke University Press 1999, A Glossary of Literary Terms, (2005) and The Character of Criticism, Routledge Press 2006 just to mention a few.

        This term one of English 400’s focus was as essay written by Harpham simply titled Ethics, with the main idea being concepts such as the “subject of humanism” the “traditional concept of the self” and the “moral law” (Harpham 387).  As a class in exploring these and other key concepts along with the novels Othello, Beloved, The Handmaid’s Tale and The God of Small Things, we used Harpham’s approaches to help further understand the moral codes of humans and how we as humans go within our surroundings in order to construct and follow what we deem as our moral laws.

Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995)

was a 20th century French philosopher. He was acclaimed for his strictly philosophical corpus, confessional writings, his highly original philosophy of ethics, which was a product of his desire to go beyond the typically neutral tradition of ontology, and his influence on other philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Jean-Paul Sartre. Levinas studied philosophy at Strasbourg University and pursued studies in phenomenology at Freiburg University. Levinas’ major works include Totality and Infinity (1961) and Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence (1974).

         In this course, we focus particularly on the content of Levinas’ most notable works, which is highlighted and discussed in one of our course texts entitled Ethics and Infinity. This text explores Levinas’ recurring ethical themes of the Other, more specifically the face and moral responsibility, which according to Levinas is the “essential, primary and fundamental structure of subjectivity.” We have used Levinas’ ideas not only to intensify our ethical inquiry as a class, but more so to understand the significance of the face as it pertains to ideas of solidarity, and our perceptions of and moral responsibility for the Other.

Richard Rorty (1931-2007),

was an American philosopher known for critiquing modern philosophy's goal of pursuing certainty and objective truth. He has written several essays and books on the topic over the years. A few of his notable works include Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature; Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity; and Achieving Our Country.
        In our class, we focused on Rorty’s theory of how solidarity works. We read the introduction and his essay on solidarity from Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. In these works, Rorty claims that we must expand our definition of “we” to achieve solidarity. By constantly working to include more groups to our definition of “we,” we can gradually teach ourselves to include everyone. Rorty also claims that the way to expand our definition of “we” is to recognize those we typically view as “other” as people who have suffered pain and humiliation. Whatever our circumstances are, suffering is an experience we have all endured, and recognizing this allows us to empathize with others despite our differences.

Denise Miller is a senior at Guilford College with a major in English and minors in Religious Studies, Business and African American Studies. A North Carolina native, she also works in the real estate industry servicing the Piedmont Triad area. Her aspirations include being on the New York Times best-selling author’s list, becoming fluent in Spanish and tutoring adults working towards getting a GED. In her spare time, which is rarely, you will find her trying to master the game of chess.

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"A Conflicted Road Trip: Social and Moral Codes Collide"

The essay explores the navigation of individuals under the rule of a social stratification system based on hierarchically ordered and inflexible social strata of rank that organizes society. The system reinforced through rigid norms that governed contact among them, and denounced and condemned marriage outside each structure. The research was conducted with the application of philosophy based on theorists Emmanuel Levinas “the Other, if it were not for the face of the other person, I might indeed maintain the illusion that everything I experience and enjoy was indeed mine”, and Richard Rorty, “the ability to see traditional differences as unimportant when compared with similarities with respect to pain and humiliation”. The lens of Levinas and Rorty were used to analyze the merging of history with present society and politics in The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. The essay includes analyses of other scholars; concluding conflict between moral and ethical behavior, and contributing factors to psychological and physical trauma when trying to meet real human needs.

Carter MacLeod is a English and Media Studies Major, and an Environmental Studies and Religious Studies Minor. Carter is a member of Guilford’s Women’s Lacrosse team, and also works on The Greenleaf Review. Last year, Carter served as the Web Editor for The Greenleaf Review. In her spare time, Carter enjoys watching terrible reality television and reading.

 

 

"Love and Ethics: Transgressive Relationships and History"

This paper is about how The God of Small Things confronts complex topics such as the nature and effect of trauma, and what it means to love ethically. The God of Small Things sets the stage for these ethical dilemmas to take place by explicating the damaging ideological systems that fuel the toxic relationships the characters experience. By exposing these underlying issues, Roy is able to display to the reader how they directly feed into ethical dilemmas regarding love, sexuality, and relationships. Roy’s writing explores the ethics of love, and exposes the heavily blurred line between right and wrong. The ideological systems that keep the characters locked in endless cycles of trauma pertaining to love are fully expressed. Through the lens of these systems Roy weaves together tangled ethical dilemmas about human relationships that do not have clear cut answers. Instead, Roy allows the reader to decide for themselves how to interpret the ethical issues regarding love, and understand the frameworks they exist within, imaginatively testing out possible decisions within a fictionalized narrative.

Sommer Fanney is a senior at Guilford College and will graduate this May with a major in English and a minor in music. In addition to academics, Sommer is a photographer and also a student athlete who competes in track and cross country. Her favorite weekend activity would be something requiring a lot of time spent outside.

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"Negotiating Solidarity in The God of Small Things"

Sommer Fanney explores how Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things both encourages and discourages the reader from reaching solidarity with “the other.” Two of ethical theorist Richard Rorty’s concepts of solidarity are used as groundwork from which to analyze how one might, or might not, find solidarity with the other in the novel. These concepts are that solidarity with the other is created through increasing our sensitivity with the other’s pain and humiliation, and that solidarity between “them” and “us” is created when the other is described in detail, and we re-describe ourselves. Through a fractured, disordered narrative structure, a heavily poetic and abstract language style, and the characters’ ongoing traumatic experiences, Roy both muddies and enlightens the reader’s understanding of the characters, ultimately challenging readers to continually negotiate solidarity among characters who suffer largely because of relentless othering.

Gerald “Hank” Groon is a senior at Guilford College with a major in English and a minor in Philosophy. Born and raised in North Carolina, two of his passions are reading good literature and preserving literary works, and is presently an intern at the Friends Historical Collection. His aspirations for the future primarily include working with and preserving rare texts. In his uncommon free time, he is an avid tabletop and online gamer.

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"The Fall of an Ethical Man: The Pressures of Personal Revelations, Societal Influence, and Deception in Shakespeare's Othello"

Ethics, morals, and virtues form the building blocks of our society. However, the very idea of society supposes that everyone will be willing to abide by the same rules and work according to the same system of ethics, morals, and virtues. Using Shakespeare’s Othello as our societal example and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as our baseline for an ethical society, we explore how a man of ethics and virtues can be brought low by those who work against the system he lives in.

Characters and situations are examined through both Aristotelian and modern points of view, dissecting the archetypes they were based on or gave birth to, and how they have influenced similar characters in more recent literature, as well as how the changing idea of what society values as “good” is changed or unchanged between the perspectives of Othello and modern ideals.

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