Othello: How to Structure an A* Response (Edexcel)

Hi all! Another great question asked by Noor R. : how do you structure an A-star level answer for Othello in Edexcel's Paper 1 exam?

I'll try my best to give you a mini guide here, but remember that I am going to be creating a course on writing good essays in the future! So, please be on the lookout for that!

In my experience, Edexcel is the most nitpicky of the exam boards. They tend to shock the teachers the most on results day, because they can be quite harsh in places. They're not supposed to mark down, but it can feel like it! I guess that's the way they keep things fair, since they have open book exams. So, it's important that you know exactly how to give them what they want to avoid any disappointment.

What are you being assessed on?

One of the most important things to establish when you're figuring out how to write an A* essay is which assessment objectives the question is asking you to cover. For this one, you're doing pretty much all of the AOs, except one:

• AO1: Having a strong, nuanced argument and presenting it in a strong and convincing way (e.g. good structure, using the right subject-specific vocabulary, academic register, not contradicting yourself)
• AO2: Analysis of language, structure and form. Explaining how the way the text was written helped you to come to your interpretation. Try to vary this as much as possible. We're moving away from just zooming in on specific words at A-level. Really focus on structure and form, as well.
• AO3: Incorporating context of both when the text was written and when it was read/seen. That's one of the big differences between GCSE and A-level, really. At this point, you need to be able to understand that different types of readers react to the same text in different ways. For example, a black man living in London in the 21st Century isn't going to react the same way to Othello as someone kicking around in Shakespeare's time. So don't just go with boring points about how 'In Shakespeare's time, women were treated as second-class citizens/property...'. So think about what's going on around different kinds of readers that make them react in the way they do.
• AO5: Thinking about different interpretations that aren't just your own. You can use these to back up what you've said, or you can refute them. Either way, they show that you're really smart because you're avoiding acting like every interesting point about Othello popped out of your head spontaneously. You're showing that you know centuries of people have spoken about the text, and that they have interesting things to say. Then, you can tie it beautifully with AO3 (but we'll get onto that).

Introductions

In your introduction, you should not be speaking about specific quotes or moments in the text. That's not the point of your intro! The point is for you to interrogate the question and come up with a big idea that's going to underpin all of the other ideas you make in your essay.

My favourite teacher-colleague at work calls that big idea a 'macro-point'. I really like that! But what does it mean? Well, it's about being able to combine the smaller, micro-points that you make in each paragraph (your topic sentences) into one or two sentences that brings them all together and sums them up.

For example, let's say that you get an essay question on the theme of jealousy in Othello (like in June 2022).

A good student might have paragraphs that talk about things like this:

• Micro-point 1: Jealousy comes from feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy. (Othello feels inadequate because of his race, Iago because of his low social status and lack of wealth, and Roderigo because of his romantic failures). All of these characters are feeling inadequate about something and it manifests in fits of jealousy.
• Micro-point 2: Jealousy is intrinsically linked to manipulation. Not only is Othello manipulated to become more jealous in the first place, but then Iago uses that jealousy to manipulate him further. Roderigo is also manipulated by Iago because of his jealousy. The same with Bianca. Although interestingly, Othello isn't using Bianca's jealousy to manipulate her. He uses it to manipulate Othello! It's interesting that women are tools rather than the focus of manipulation.
• Micro-point 3: Jealousy leads to sinful, immoral actions, including retribution. We're not just talking about the bloody, violent end here, but also the actions of Roderigo and Othello striking Desdemona.

Now we've got to find a way to bring all the points together in the introduction to make a bigger point! For me, this macro-point would probably be something along the lines of jealousy being a social disease that stems from existing inequalities within society and disrupts the body politic. Then I could explain it a little more in my intro by briefly mentioning my micro-points.

I'd end the introduction with some information about why I think Shakespeare has presented jealousy in this way based on the context of his time.

Main body paragraphs

In the main body of your essay, an A* student shouldn't begin a new section by talking about a specific character or moment from the text. Why? Well, a single character or scene in the play can embody so many different themes, ideas and messages. So things can get very messy very quickly and you'll end up repeating yourself way too much. That's not the sign of a high-level essay.

On top of that, AO1 should underpin every single part of your essay. It's the most important assessment objective! So, the best way to prove to the examiner that you're doing enough of it is to start every part of your essay with it!. Doing that allows you to make comparisons between characters and scenes that you can't make very efficiently or effectively if you try to go one character at a time.

Instead, you should start with a micro-point, like the one I showed you above. That allows you to pull evidence from lots of different characters and parts of the text and show similarities between them. You can cluster quotes very well and show that different characters and scenes use similar language, structure and form to convey the same message. It's a sign of an A* student to be able to range across the text rather than going chronologically.

So, your first sentence of a main-body section might look something like this:

Shakespeare presents jealousy as stemming from feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy.

That then allows you to talk about lots of different characters and beef up your paragraphs with lots of quotes. After all, a good A-level paragraph should have at least 5 short quotes in it, in my opinion.

Then you can move onto noticing similarities between characters: Othello, Roderigo and Iago all experience the feeling of not living up to society's hegemonic expectations of masculinity, for example. This then manifests in jealousy.

Once you've found these similarities between different characters and moments, the next step is to prove that! How do you know they feel inadequate or powerless? How do you know that this leads to their jealousy? Give me lots of quotes and point out of the language, structure and form of your examples makes us think that.

Tying AO3 and AO5 into your main body paragraphs

Make sure you are always talking about AO3 and AO5. The nice thing is that, as I mentioned, they can often go hand-in-hand.

Of course, you can and should be thinking about the social, economic, historical, linguistic, literary and biographical context going on around Shakespeare. The othering of people of colour at that time, for example. This will help you to think about why Shakespeare has made the text the way he has.

But also, it's important to think about your own context and the context of other people reading the text. A good way to do that is to tie things back to AO5. For example, a Postcolonial scholar reading Othello might draw attention to the othering of Othello as a character and how Roderigo's feelings of entitlement towards Desdemona in part stem from the fact that because Othello is a foreigner, he perceives him as less worthy of Desdemona's love. He acts more violently towards Cassio because he actually sees him as a threat in a way that he doesn't with Othello.

A more intersectional critic might build on that and comment on how there are interesting similarities between race , gender and lack of social status in terms of how they can prevent you from accessing the true benefits of a white, patriarchal society. A Marxist critic might agree with that, but also point out the fact that the one person who is presented as a villain is the one of a lower class (Iago), which suggests that working-class people are viewed with more scorn.

Think about how a black person reading in the 21st century would perceive Othello's jealousy when reading the text. What's going on in the world around them that would make them read the text in that way? And how would that be different from Shakespeare's contemporary readers?

Of course, you should also be adding in information from the tragedy anthology that Edexcel gives you.

Conclusion

Your conclusion should be about explaining how you used your micro-points to come to your macro-point. How did the micro-points make you come to the conclusion that jealousy is a social disease?

Tips

Some extra tips for you:

• Check out my AO5 post so you know the different ways to do AO5.
• Avoid feeling like you have to structure your essay in PEEL or PEA or PETAL or something. Just start with a good AO1 point at the beginning of each section and then talk me though your thought process of how you got there. It's about making sure you include analysis, context and alternate interpretations, not about forcing you to follow a rigid order!
• You don't have to do everything in one paragraph! If the paragraph gets too long, switch to another paragraph to continue your argument. It's the section of your essay that needs to start with a good topic sentence, not each and every paragraph! Sometimes, one section is longer than a paragraph. In that case, you might want to start it with an AO5 alternative interpretation from a critic instead, as long as you can tie it back to your topic sentence.
• Interrogate the question. Before you start, ask yourself, 'What am I even being asked here?' and that will help you to structure a good A* essay.
• Always put your interpretation over the characters. The characters aren't real people! They're tools, just like similes and metaphors are.
• Try to learn some good, high-level language like 'hegemony', 'body politic' and 'microcosm' so that you can sound more sophisticated and speed up your writing.