All the characters in Othello work within a context of background assumptions of traditional Christian values, which center on the concepts of honesty and sexual morality. In the world of Othello, an honest person is straightforward and reliable, tells the truth when it is appropriate to speak, and keeps silent on occasion. Honesty involves keeping one's word about what one will do or say and remaining constant to one's loyalties. An honest person is reliable in social and business matters, is a loyal friend, and can be trusted to keep a secret. Furthermore, an honest person is assumed to be reliable in terms of sexual morality. Sexual morality involves fidelity in marriage and abstinence outside marriage. Human nature being as it is, such an ideal is not always reached, and there is wide room in Shakespeare's society, thought, and language for adultery, prostitution, and impulsive words and actions later regretted.
The opposite of "honest," meaning either "reliable" or "sexually correct," is "false," with its connotations of counterfeit, unreliable, bad, and rotten. Sexually correct behavior is "chaste," incorrect behavior is "unchaste." Othello kills Desdemona because he thinks she is false, and Iago kills Emilia because she is honest.
In the world of Othello, these values are upheld as the basis for acceptable social interaction, and although the play is built around values founded in Christianity, there is very little religious awareness and concern in the dialogue, the exception being in the murder scene, where Othello proposes giving Desdemona time to pray for forgiveness of her sins before she dies. Desdemona, however, is far more concerned with talking Othello out of killing her and says only a very general "Lord have mercy on me." Iago never shows any concern for the values he abuses, but treats his life as a matter for cunning, maneuvering within his immediate environment only.
