Tuesday, January 28, 2020

The Knot Essay Example for Free

The Knot Essay According to Sahlman, the success of entrepreneurial ventures, such as The Knot, is dependent on four critical success factors, namely the people, the opportunity, the deal and the context. Each of these factors is dynamic and the entrepreneur must constantly reevaluate and adjust the four factors to create value. People The category people include the key players of the entrepreneurial venture. Within this category, the strengths and weaknesses and the experience of the people involved is critical. The entrepreneur has to determine if something is missing in the team, thus if people should be added or replaced. The Knot’s management team consists of four ex New York University’s Film School students. All of them are experienced entrepreneurs. First, Liu and Roney are co-founders of the CD-ROM development company RunTime Inc. Pervious, Liu was an experienced manager and Roney spent six years as creative director and editor. Second, Wolfson and Fassino are founders of the Digital Media Division for Margeotes Fertitta + Partners. Before, Wolfson was founder of a creative production company and Fassino has experience in the advertising industry. The two different companies successfully collaborated at the Sotheby’s project. The four partners emphasize the potential of their collective experience and know-how, including management, advertising, the creative industry and production. They found Element Studios in 1995 to capitalize their abilities. After the acquisition of Bridal Search, Russ and Becky Casenhiser were added to the management team. Both of them were successful entrepreneurs as well. Russ developed the industry’s largest, searchable database and Becky procured and maintained relationships with all the manufacturers. Especially their experience in retail was valuable when the business model developed further. After all, the team of The Knot consists of capable people with experience in multiple disciplines who complement each other. However, when entering the gift registry business, in which inventory management and delivery arrangements would be crucial, there is a need for people with experience in logistics. Experienced people could be recruited as employees or entrepreneurs in this industry could be added to the management team. The opportunity The characteristics of the opportunity are critical for the success of the venture as well as for the way the entrepreneur should respond to a certain opportunity. Characteristics of the opportunity include the nature and the possibility to replicate by competitors. The task of the entrepreneur is to determine if the opportunity should be exploited immediately and to set eventually milestones to assess the success of the project. Element was founded with the aim to realize a successful media business, however, there was no focus on a certain opportunity before the company was founded. The management team started looking for an opportunity and was attracted by the high advertising revenue in the wedding industry. They found an opportunity in the lack of a fresh competitor and the possibility to differentiate by building an online business foundation. Besides the possibility to differentiate, the online business foundation required a lower investment. Thus, the initial business model consisted of creating an online medium that attracts visitors and generates advertising revenue. The Knot’s team formulated their initial goals as ‘becoming a full-service online wedding resource and a recognizable brand in the industry’. The initial investment is relatively low compared to the potential revenue with an advertising market of $168 million and a limited number of competitors. Since the idea is easy to copy by potential competitors, it was important to exploit the idea immediately to gain first mover advantage. The initial business model was complemented in stages. With the launch of The Knot’s own web site in May 1997, they entered the retail market via The Knot Gift Shop. Their first venture in retail started with the sale of cameras, but other products were quickly added. In June 2007, after the acquisition of Bridal Search, The Knot could offer the only comprehensive online database of wedding dresses to its customers. As a result, advertising revenue increased. After successful development of The Knot’s current business activities, Liu focused on the bridal registry business. This business has enormous potential since it represents half of all wedding-related revenue. The process of the development of a comprehensive list of gifts by soon-to-be-weds that had to be purchased by wedding guests was ready for an online solution. Moreover, characteristics of the registry business encompassed the opportunity to efficiently organize delivery arrangements with manufacturers. In turn, this would allow The Knot to maintain more control over its brand, pricing and merchandising. Since the listing of products and services did not require inventory to be held, this would enable effective management of The Knot’s balance sheet. Although the model for gift registry is already in a later stage of development, it is important to exploit immediately since competitors have had capital investments already. Deals The opportunity has to be structured by different deals. These deals include considerations such as incentives and contingencies and the choice between financing instruments and financers. The entrepreneur should aim to motivate all players according to their input and create stakeholders that increase the probability of success. By joining the Greenhouse program of American Online (AOL), The Knot aimed to garner a substantial proportion of the online wedding consumer market. Besides initial investments, AOL could be seen as a strategic partner with a developing online consumer base. AOL invested in return for warrants up to 45% of The Knot’s equity, 20% of the revenue from advertising on the AOL property and a percentage of advertising revenue from The Knot’s own web site. In addition, Bridal Search was acquired for 10. 000 shares of common stock, while they had the opportunity to earn up to an additional 32. 857 shares. This potential bonus could be referred to as an extra motivation to perform. The context Contextual issues can change the nature of the opportunity. Issues include current and potential competitors, the government and economic conditions and trends. The entrepreneur should attempt to forecast contextual movements and benefit from these changes. The competitive context of The Knot before the exploitation of the opportunity was characterized by three magazines, with an average of 40 years of experience in the industry and strong relationships with advertiser. There was a change that the deeply entrenched magazines would renounce moving to the internet since they feared cannibalization of their existing businesses. This changed the nature of the opportunity in a way that it was an extra motivation to launch an online business. The Knot’s performance To reach their goals, The Knot put effort to optimize their services and build brand awareness. First, the provision of value-added services to users, such as information about travelling, wedding planning and fashion, resulted in development of a strong user community. Further, from the early beginning, The Knot targeted potential partners to build awareness of the brand, resulting in The Knot’s Registry Partner Program with nationwide key players. The first offline brand building effort was implemented in August 2007 by signing a three-book deal with Bantam Doubleday. In addition, they agreed to co-produce a television program entitled Wedding for the Real World to promote online services and books. The usefulness of performance metrics significantly differs for startups in comparison with established companies. Although startups are diverse, they share some common characteristics that affect the use of financial metrics. To illustrate, revenues are small or non-existing and the establishment of a business generally result in significant operating losses. Therefore, financial metrics such as the income statement, balance sheet, and the statement of cash flows provide little usable information. However, the information in these financial metrics regarding predicted years could be used to calculated performance measures, such as return on investment (ROI) and return on assets (ROA). Instead, to gauge the performance of a startup company like The Knot’s, other financial and non-financial metrics are used. First, it is important to measure the ability of the company to generate revenue at an early stage. The Knot managed to generate significant revenue at an early stage. After their initial appearance on AOL, The Knot generated over $ 25. 000 of advertising revenue. Later, after the acquisition of Bridal Search, three deals representing $ 750. 000 in advertising revenue were signed. Second, the period that a company can survive without raising additional capital is an useful measure for startups. The ‘burn rate’ is referred to as the money spend by a company each month. The number of months that a company has to raise additional capital is calculated by dividing the amount of cash reserves by the burn rate. Since The Knot only has enough money to coffer its operation for three months by November 1997, the need to raise capital is very urgent. This can be explained by their initial focus on gaining market share instead of becoming profitable. This strategy is particularly common for ‘dot-com’ companies. Besides financial metrics, non-financial metrics are important to measure the performance of startups. Non-financial metrics for e-commerce companies include for instance retained customers. However, for the wedding industry, this metrics are not applicable since customers are not expected to return after their first number of product and service purchases. Other measures that are applicable to The Knot are web metrics such as total page views and total unique visitors. Concerning this measures, The Knot performed above expectance with an increase in unique visitors of their AOL page from 65. 000 to 260. 000 in seven months. In addition, after launching their own Web site, they realized 2. 7 million page views. To conclude, The Knot has managed to gain attention at an early stage from potential customers, this resulted in advertising income. The company has a relatively high burn rate as compared with their current liabilities; this leads to an urgent need for additional capital investors since they can coffer their operating expenses for just three months. The need for additional funding As predicted by the life-cycle of a VC fund, which predicts focus on investment in the first four to five years, The Knot needs further funding in their current phase. First, there is a need for cash to invest in the development of The Knot brand and build out the technological infrastructure to capitalize Knot’s current momentum in the race for scale economies. On a more practical level, capital is needed to fund the payroll and pay for day-to-day operating expenses. Second, The Knot needs funding to develop the gift registry business. The need for quick funding rose due to developments on the competitive front. The Knot’s current business activities were targeted by competition form online businesses that had recently launched web sites. Furthermore, Internet Gift Registries, which would be a competitor of The Knot after entering the gift registry business, had recently received funding from a private investor. Financial advisors agreed that The Knot is an attractive investment and recommended The Knot’s management team to raise as much capital as possible. After all, the management team and its financial advisors agreed that The Knot would seek $10 million in exchange for Series B Convertible Preferred Stock. This proceeds will be used to develop its registry service and to accelerate marketing and promotion of its online services. Valuation of the company In order to give a fair estimate of the value of The Knot, a combination of both the NPV method and the Market approach method is used. The use of the NPV method is possible because this is not a completely new company and it has a track record to evaluate. Also, in the business plan The Knot presented, they give extensive predictions for future performance and cash flows. The NPV method alone would not be enough since these numbers are still only a prediction. Even though these predictions were made by an external company, helping to make them more reliable and independent than when The Knot had made them, they are still not hard numbers. Combining the results of the NPV with a comprehensive Market analysis, in which both market potential will be measured and comparable companies, the multiples, will be analyzed, will give an accurate estimate of the value of The Knot. Using only the market approach would also not suffice since the relatively new nature of the business (registry online) makes it hard to find other companies to effectively compare with The Knot. The asset valuation approach is not used because, given the nature of internet companies, there would be little tangible assets to value. Since intangible assets are a lot harder to value this would not give an accurate value for The Knot (2). The multiplication method is not used because The Knot is currently still not at break-even, which makes it near impossible to calculate. Also, since the prediction show a very sharp estimated increase in revenues after the capital injection, the multiplication method could be very far off the true value of the firm and ergo not be a reliable method to determine the value (2). To conclude, the average between the NPV method and the market approach will give the most reliable value estimate for The Knot. Potential investors The Knot is looking for an investment of $10 million to develop brand image and develop their registry business. However, the urgent need for investment due to the forecasted ‘fume’ in January 1998 needs to be taken into account. This leads to disqualification of the strategic partnership option because The Knot would be in a very week place at the negotiation table because of time pressure. Besides this, a partner for a new business venture would probably not be hard to find, but finding a partner who is willing to pay for the operational cost for the other activities of The Knot as well, would seem much more unlikely. Finally, forming partnership takes time and time is something The Knot does not have. Choosing between angel investors and VC’s comes down to the nature of these investment entities. Angel investors are usually less risk averse but they tend to focus on invest in new start-ups and their investments are relatively lower compared to a VC (1). A VC usually invests in a later point of the start up and invests larger sums of money (1). Looking at these characteristics of both these entities, it seems clear that going for a VC would be the best option. If the valuation of The Knot comes out favorably, it would cover the more risk averse nature of the VC and justify a sizable investment of 10 million. There are drawbacks of using a VC, namely they most likely will want to exercise a lot of control over The Knot’s business, more so than angel investors. However, engagement of the VC can have a positive affect on the development of capabilities as well. Looking at the time constraints and the amount of needed cash this seems unavoidable. Therefore, capital investment by a VC would be the best option to meet the needs on The Knot.

Monday, January 20, 2020

Power in OConnors The Artificial Nigger and Masons Shiloh Essay

Power in O'Connor's The Artificial Nigger and Mason's Shiloh Flannery O'Connor's story The Artificial Nigger and Bobbie Ann Mason's story Shiloh both possess characters that excercise power . Mr. Head, the main character that exercises power in The Artificial Nigger, is an old racist man, who claims to know everything. In Mason's story, Norma Jean, a simple southern woman who wants change in her life, is the main character that exercises power. Both characters are similar in their successful exercise of power; however, the effects their power have are different. Mr. Head's exercise of power has a negative effect on his grandson, Nelson, while Norma Jean's exercise of power serves as a way to benefit herself. Mr. Head's main focus is to make Nelson see black people as "niggers" and for Nelson to fear the city. Mr. Head's controling nature effects Nelson in a negative manner. From the beginning of the story, Mr. Head's powerful and controling personality is evident when the narrator states, "...he saw half of the moon five feet away in his shaving mirror, paused as if it were waiting to enter" (249). Mr. Head's desire to control also extends to all aspects of life. His intentions for Nelson are clear when he says, "...but I mean for him to get his fill once and for all" (254). By making Nelson feel powerless, Mr. Head steals away his innocence. Before influencing his grandson, Nelson's description of a black man is "'A man,'" but later in the story Nelson begins to see black people as "niggers," just like his grandfather (255). Fearing the cit y, also has a negative effect on Nelson. He holds pride in being born in Atlanta, but his grandfather wants to teach Nelson that "he had no cause for pride merely because he had been... ...aking classes, she is able to slowly but surely find her independence again. Norma Jean finally tells her husband that she wants to leave him because she does not want to "...feel eighteen again" (500). By leaving Leroy and starting a new life, Norma Jean is able to forget the pain and embarassment she felt many years ago. The power she possesses enables her to succeed in her wish to move on. The characters in both stories have similarities and differences. Mr. Head and Norma Jean use their power to get what they want. Both are similar because they are successful in exercising their power and are different becausse their power has different effects. Mr. Head thrives on control and succeeds in his plan to control his grandson. Norma Jean works at self-improvemennt so that she can leave her husband and continue to live the life that she has longed for. Â   Â  

Sunday, January 12, 2020

Knowledge and Understanding of the Confessions of Jeremiah Essay

Outline your knowledge and understanding of the Confessions of Jeremiah Jeremiah was the son of Hilkiah, and a member of a priestly family. He was a native of Judah and came from Anathoth, a small village in the north east of Jerusalem. His prophetic ministry lasted from approximately 626 to 580BC, and is one of the longest of all the writing prophets. The prophet Jeremiah began his long prophetic career in 626BC; â€Å"in the thirteenth year of Josiah’s reign† He was still a very young man at this time. The narrative of his call is in a dialogue between Jeremiah and Yahweh. From this we can see straight away that Jeremiah had a very intimate relationship with God from the outset. Unlike other prophets, Jeremiah seems to have been chosen to be a prophet before he was even born. â€Å"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. Before you were born I consecrated you, I appointed you a prophet to the nations.† It seemed it was the destiny of Jeremiah to be a prophet. According to Kidner, Jeremiah was â€Å"handmade for the task.† Similarly to Moses and Amos, at first Jeremiah was reluctant to consent to his mission, saying â€Å"Ah Lord God behold I do not know how to speak for I am only a youth†, but his faith in Yahweh gave him faith in himself, and he accepted the role God asked of him. Perhaps this teaches us the meaning of rising to face personal challenges. Yahweh said to Jeremiah â€Å"Be not afraid of them for I am with you to deliver you.† This is very much the faith of believers today, that in times of trouble, God is constant in our lives. In Jeremiahs call, Yahweh outlines the purpose of his ministry. He says â€Å"I have set you this day over nations and kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.† This summarizes the two main aspects of Jeremiahs mission. It was to be a twofold mission, having both a positive and negative mission, and promising reconstruction after destruction. Yahweh intended to punish the people for their sins and injustice, yet it would be this destruction that would create a new and holy people. In this aspect, we can see a similarity between Hosea and Jeremiah, in that Hosea also believed in Redemptive Judgement. Following the dialogue of Jeremiah’s call, there were two visions. The first of these visions is the vision of the almond rod, and the second vision is one of the boiling pot facing away from the north. These visions both contained a message of judgement. The mouth of the put is facing towards the south, away from the north, which implies that the danger that Judah will face will come from the north, and that these forces will destroy Judah. Yahweh says here â€Å"And I will utter my judgements against them, for all their wickedness in forsaking me; they have made their offerings to other gods, and worshipped the works of their own hands.† In his visions, God speaks very frankly of judgement, expressing that it is going to happen soon, and that the destruction is going to come from the North. After this, Yahweh encourages Jeremiah again with the divine power of his task. He is made aware that being young and experienced, he would be resisted and persecuted by many, but that he would be upheld and strengthened by God. Jeremiah understood â€Å"sin† in terms of the betrayal of love, and accused the people of being guilty of embracing pagan gods, and flirting with heathen empires. They succumbed to the corrupting influences of the nature cults. Jeremiah found their behaviour incredible, and failed to understand why after Yahweh had been so good to the people during the time of exodus, they would desert him. He accused the people of forsaking Yahweh saying â€Å"They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.† In other words, they had deserted Yahweh for gods which were useless to them. Jeremiah also outlined the futility of foreign alliances, and said that in times of political emergency, he left their true protector. They lost faith in Yahweh, and this led to Assyria losing their religion independence. Jeremiah felt this was stupidity on their part, and appealed to the people to return to the covenant, but they paid him no heed. The call from Jeremiah is a call for repentance. Kidner said â€Å"Judah had seen it all and followed suit, sinning with her eyes open. To make it worse she had put on a sanctimonious show of repentance and reform.† Jeremiah says that the Jews were guilty of syncretism and apostasy, but that they were so religiously complacent that they were ignorant of their own sin. There was evidence of paganism and the people of Judah were confused. The nation had sunk to a dangerously low level of religious impurity. They had become hardened, and unfeeling in relation to their conscience. Jeremiahs confessions are autobiographical. The book of Jeremiah is split into six different passages The passages in jeremiahs confessions have three things in common, they are in first person, they are directly addressed to God and not to the people or its rulers, and they express the deep suffering felt by the prophet in exercising his mission. These passages are what made Jeremiah unique amongst the Hebrew prophets. He is the only prophet to reveal the personal impact his role had on him. In the confessional passages we see a real, human being, whose frailty we can identify with and whose trauma we can understand. Rarely did other prophets give us a glimpse into their lives, but in the passages Jeremiah wrote, he revealed his soul. Throughout his ministry, Jeremiah was often in conflict with his own contemporaries. This conflict was not his choosing. We are reminded of Hosea, in the sense that Jeremiah was a man of intense sympathy and tenderness of the heart, and all he wanted was to feel the love and companionship of others. He despised the conflict that deprived him of warmth and conflict that he craved, and so he became a depressed and hostile man. Yahweh said to Jeremiah â€Å"You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons and daughters in this place.† This was due to the impending crisis. In the ancient near east, sterility was considered to be a terrible curse, so we know from this that Jeremiahs celibacy would not have been down to personal choice. This shows how Jeremiah endured personal suffering, as a result of the nation’s wickedness. The first two passages in Jeremiahs confessions reveal a plot against his life, instigated by immediate family and acquaintances. The people saw Jeremiah, son of a priest, as a traitor. He reacted fiercely to this plot, and asked for the death of these men. The incident caused Jeremiah to reflect on his mission, and on the very meaning of human existence. As Jeremiah asked for no more than justice, God upheld his fierce reaction saying â€Å"I am going to punish them†¦For I will bring disaster upon the people of Anathoth.† This punishment however is not for vengeance, it is for reform. It is here that Jeremiah shows us a different side of him. He exaggerates the gloom, and welcomes the thought of retribution. Yahweh tells him that he has to keep his faith and courage during his sufferings, because they are little compared to what is to come. God knows only too well the pain of ingratitude; desertion from a spouse; defiance of a son, a daughter. A parallel is evident between the family’s rejection of Jeremiah, and the nation’s rejection of Yahweh. In the third passage, we see a new outburst and pleading by Jeremiah as he describes the â€Å"inner crisis† he is facing. He believed that everything he did seemed to bring him into conflict with his fellow men. It is here that Jeremiah laments on his mother, saying â€Å"woe is me, my mother that you ever bore me, a man of strife and contention to the whole land.† As Jeremiah’s call predates his birth, to curse the day of his birth would mean a rejection of his mission. His persecution arises from the message he has to deliver. Jeremiah was depressed by his work and often wondered about its purpose. In his eyes, all it caused was contention with his fellow Jews, and made him considered a troublemaker. The reaction the people of Judah gave him meant he became bitter, and saw himself condemned to a life of loneliness. The people reacted in such a hostile way to Jeremiah because he told them what they didn’t want to hear. He foretold disaster and the people remained sceptical of what he was saying, which only caused Jeremiah to fall even further into depression. As a result of the personal persecution and enforced loneliness, Jeremiah became vindictive and actually prayed for vengeance on those who treated him so poorly. This desire for vengeance only further reveals the humanity of Jeremiah. The third confession also indicates that Jeremiah faced an inward struggle with Yahweh, as well as an outward struggle with men. He was torn between obligation and inclination. He felt obliged to work as a prophet, and continue to live the sort of life that would lead to conflict with others, but due to the stress his prophetic work caused him, he felt inclined to avoid it. In the beginning, the words of Yahweh brought Jeremiah joy. â€Å"Your words were found, and I ate them and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart†, but this has all changed now. Jeremiah has been left an object of ridicule, and God’s words no longer gave him joy. He felt God used him as instrument to announce pain and destruction on people he felt love for, and at times he was almost blasphemous, accusing Yahweh of overpowering and misleading him. â€Å"Oh Lord though hast deceived me, and I was deceived, thou art stronger than I and thou hast prevailed. Yahweh’s reply renews and confirms he prophet’s mission, using the very words from his call. â€Å"And I will make you to this people a fortified wall of bronze.† It is made clear h owever, that this will only happen when Jeremiah has converted, and regained confidence within his mission. In the last of the confessional passages, Jeremiah tells us of his most dramatic inner crisis, firmly believing that Yahweh has tricked him. â€Å"Oh Lord you have enticed me and I was enticed; you have over powered me and you have prevailed.† He fears being classed as a false prophet, which would have been devastating because he is one of the biggest critics of them. These false prophets were Jeremiahs greatest competition, and promised a shortcut to divine restoration. They spoke of peace, and attempted to â€Å"heal the wound of the people lightly†, but their remedies failed to touch even the root of the problem. Jeremiah says the complete opposite to these false prophets. Jeremiah believed that Yahweh would intervene in human history to punish, where as the false prophets proclaimed that God was uninterested in human affairs, and therefore that he wouldn’t intervene in them. Jeremiah believes that they feed the Jews with false hope, whenever doom is inevitable, and without the destruction they cannot be rebuilt. According to Bright, these prophets are â€Å"nothing but wind.† The role of a true prophet was often to act as a contestant to the status quo. The people of Judah did not like the challenge that Jeremiah was presenting them with. Jeremiah remained insistent however, that in light of Judah’s perversity, she would be punished. Although here he is clearly presented as a Prophet of Doom, this is only one aspect to his mission, and like other prophets, he does have a message of hope. Similarly to Amos, Jeremiah is warning the people what is to come if they do not repent, he is giving them warning so change is a possibility. It is for this reason he is also known as the â€Å"Prophet of Repentance.† He feels doubtful in relation to his message, and feels he is crying wolf in regard to his mission, by proclaiming a message of judgement which has not yet come to pass. Once again we are reminded of the conflict with Jeremiah in relation to obligation and inclination. Here Jeremiah describes his obligation to speak in a prophetic voice as a fire burning within him, forcing him to go on with his prophetic work despite the feeling that his inclination was to stop. Jeremiah speaks of his struggle saying â€Å"If I saw I will not mention him, or speak anymore in his name, the n within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones. I am weary with holding it in and I cannot.† When Jeremiah says â€Å"But the Lord is with me like a dread warrior; therefore my persecutors will stumble†, he seems to have come to realise that within him there was the potential to move forwards and cope with what he thought was impossible. He finally realised that he was not alone, and that God would always be with him. Although Jeremiah at times curses the day he was born, the one thing that lifted him out of his depression was the deep conviction that Yahweh would always be there for him. Kidner says on Jeremiah â€Å"He goes on to his worst ordeals with never a hesitation or a word of doubt.† In conclusions, the outpourings from Jeremiahs heart that we witness in his confessions could be said to reveal imperfections about his human character, such as vindictiveness towards his fellow men and irrelevance towards God. However as Jeremiah was aware of his own perfections, by repenting Yahweh would help him overcome all of his human imperfections. If only the Jews had have realised the need to repent, then Yahweh could have help them overcome their imperfections through prayer and dialogue.

Saturday, January 4, 2020

Manipulation andf the Dramatic Irony of Othello by...

The play Othello was written in the 1600’s; there were many themes to pull out while reading it. One that stood out to me the most was manipulation. There are many tactics available to get what you want and make people your puppets. Playing with their emotions and mind, by being charming, and putting on an act pretending to be interested in what’s best for them. In Othello by Shakespeare, we see how easy it is to skillfully influence gullible people using similes and dramatic irony. This play started out with the beautiful Desdemona and the Moor Othello. Marrying behind closed doors, their decision caused a lot of commotion. Jealous men of the love and power they shared planned to shed blood. Devious Iago made a plan to get Othello out of†¦show more content†¦This ties into the theme because Iago did snag him in his game. He got Cassio to sell everything he had and give it him in return for many intriguing lies. Another literary device Shakespeare used to get t he theme manipulation across was dramatic irony. I like the way he used this in the play because it gives the people reading insight on things the characters will eventually find out but currently aren’t aware of. One quote that I thought was particularly important was â€Å"†¦. It is my natures plague to spy into abuses, and oft my jealousy shapes faults that are not†¦ It were not for your quiet nor your good not for my manhood, honest, and wisdom to let you know my thoughts† (Act 3, Scene 3, line 152-158) because Iago was starting to say things about Cassio looking suspicious when leaving Desdemona just before this came out his mouth. Then telling Othello he didn’t want to tell him about his thoughts because it would destroy his peace of mind only gave Othello more skepticism about his wife’s infidelity, going right along with Iago’s plan. Another example of dramatic irony was when Desdemona had dropped the handkerchief her husband gave to her and Emilia picked it up to give to Iago. â€Å"(picks up the handkerchief) I am glad I have found this napkin, this was her first remembrance from the Moor. My wayward husband hath a hundred times