Othello Act V, scene ii, lines 1-24

During his monologue, Othello struggles with the two facets Desdemona: the one he loved and the one that was unfaithful. He is still in love with the Desdemona he originally fell in love with, but he feels that she has a fatal error and must suffer because of it. He says, "Yet I'll not shed her blood, / Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, / And smooth as monumental alabaster. / Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men" (V. ii. 3-6). Othello basks in Desdemona's beauty when he talks about why he will no kill her. He describes her as overwhelmingly white, symbolically representing her innocence through her beauty and the woman he fell in love with. He spends two and a half lines of the topic of not killing her, a full two on why he shouldn't kill her, yet he only spends one line on the topic of killing her with only half a line on why he should kill her. There is a clear disparity in how much time Othello spends talking about each option. Othello easily could have said something along the lines of "I won't kill her because she is too beautiful" and he would have spent a relatively even amount of time on each option. Instead, he describes her beauty and seems to get lost in it, going on and on, signaling that he still loves her. Also, the influence of reason and emotion in his decisions can be represented by the time he spends justifying each option. Othello spends more time justifying not killing Desdemona using his emotions in describing her beauty than he does justifying killing her when he simply says "else she'll betray more men." His justification of killing his wife is oddly absent of emotion, and the simple half-line of reason quickly overtakes the two lines of emotion in his decision, signifying the weight that emotion and reason have in his mind. Reason holds much more power in the mind of Othello than does emotion because although he may have a ton of emotional reasons not to do something, if he has just one small logical reason to do something, he will side with logic.