O! beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on.
~William Shakespeare, Othello
Jealousy is an emotion often used as a synonym for the emotion envy, but I have to point out that these two are actually different. Envy is what a person feels when they want something that another person has or hopes that the other person will lose whatever they envious person lacks. In contrast, jealousy is when a person may feel anxiety because they have fear of losing something that he or she possesses to another person. I just wanted to point this out before you read the post. In our English class, we’re taking up one of William Shakespeare’s tragedies, Othello. The story is basically about love, hate, jealousy and betrayal. The antagonist of the story, Iago, basically thrives on the trust of his boss, Othello, in order to destroy him.
One of the masterpiece characters of Shakespeare is Iago, the epitome of true villainy in the literary world. The villain with the most lines in all of Shakespeare’s plays is a perfect example of a person who lacks that conscience which stops or at least serves as a hesitation to people who may want to do the things that he does in the story. But enough about Iago, the main subject of this post is his drive to do these kinds of things.
The wrath of jealousy affects a lot of people. It eats away at your self control until you somehow explode… or not, depends on how you may want to deal with the problem. Although not a lot of people could deal with these problems as masterfully evil as Iago can.
Sometimes jealousy can happen without any reason whatsoever. That in itself maybe the scariest thing about it. It could also be the hardest kind of feeling to pinpoint which makes it all the more dangerous. It will subtly take over, but not a lot of people who experience this emotion will admit to it which will just make it worse for both parties, those parties being the person jealous and the person he gets mad at because he is jealous (see how complicated things could get?). The buildup of these negative emotions will result badly if the people involved decide not to deal with the problem accordingly.
Jealousy could also result from misinterpreted actions done by a person. Let us say that a man and a woman are romantically involved with each other (a perfect example being Othello and Desdemona), and another person comes in, that person posing as a possible threat to one of the people within that romantic relationship. The man (or the woman) may misinterpret small actions by the possible third wheel to their lover, such as a fleeting touch or friendly hug, and so the feeling of anxiety will soon build up to another emotion. This is not exclusive to people in a romantic relationship, but also to good friends who may seem to be veering away because of another person.
Although jealousy may not always be a bad thing. If it’s a protective reasonable kind of jealousy that doesn’t do anyone any harm and in fact may show how much a person cares about you then it could be perfectly fine. It’s just how a person plans to do with the emotion that may matter to it being a normal kind of thing or not.
And that concludes this post.
