um well i was proud of this until i found out i got only a high C on it but here’s a snippet of my essay on racism and colonisation in the tempest and othello:

Similarly to The Tempest, colonisation is also present in Othello but in this circumstance Othello does not find himself oppressed at the hands of colonisation. One such example of colonial activity in Othello is the Venetians’ attempt to colonise Cyprus before the Turkish could; Othello has an active role in colonisation whilst Caliban is a slave. In this case, the portrayal seeks to focus more on the internal dislike as opposed to the external prejudice experienced by Caliban. Although Othello wasn’t in a position where he was oppressed because of colonisation, racism was an integral part of colonial activity which he found himself the subject of and was detrimental in his downfall.

In the the first scene of Othello, Othello is perpetually referred to in derogatory racial terms such as “Moor”, “sooty bosom” and is labelled as having stereotypical black features, “ what a full fortune does the thick-lips owe” [1.1.66]. This fixation on Othello’s race, specifically from Iago and Roderigo, constructs a negative stereotype of the titular protagonist, one that doesn’t exist; although this is possibly undermined as the audience do not respect such evil characters and are positioned on Othello’s side throughout the play. It could be argued that in the colonialist society that Shakespeare was writing in, religion serves as a justification for the racial hostility that Othello faced. Iago describes Othello as being “the devil,” playing on a 16th century idea that black men were associated with wickedness and that the devil often took the shape and form of a black man; as Reginald Scott described, “a damned soul may and doth take the shape of a blackamore”.

This idea derives from the bible-centred conception of the world in which individuals were categorised accordingly to their geographical distance from the Holy land. As a result of this, black people were seen as evil because they subsisted outside both the physical and the ethereal dominion of Christianity. Blacks became affiliated with the descendents of Ham and there was a ubiquitous idea that your blackness was linked to your sexuality: as in if you were black, you were automatically lascivious. Before Othello appears in the play for the first time, the audience was led to believe that he was sexually rampant from Iago’s dwelling on his sexuality. He depicts the idea that Othello and Desdemona are “making the beast with two backs” to Branbantio, thus playing on the 16th century notions that black men had an animal-like hyper sexuality. It is suggested that Caliban tried to rape Miranda which again emphasises this idea of black sexuality. Ania Loomba proposes that, “The myth of the black rapist is even more useful, for it perpetuates black animalism while obliterating female agency…” In The Tempest, religion almost acts as a scapegoat for Prospero’s colonisation of the island. When Miranda enquires as to how Prospero came to reign over the land, he replies to her, “By providence divine” [1.2.159]. From this, Prospero implies the ideas that it was God’s will that they came across the island. This emphasises the mindset of the 16th century: if you were white Caucasian, you had divine rights above all else.

uhhhhhhhh like what? any essay i’ve ever written in my life or?