The Empire of Deceit In the play Julius Caesar, written by the playwright William Shakespeare, the characters Brutus and Mark Antony each recite a speech in the market place after Caesar’s death. These speeches, exemplifying parallelism, verbal irony, and witty use rhetoric, expose the true intentions of these characters. From these speeches, the reader can understand the true intentions of these characters and thus conclude for themselves whether or not the slaying of Caesar was one of justice or one of greed. Corruption is always apparent in every society. No matter what time, age, or government, every man or women always has a second intention. In murdering Caesar, Brutus hoped that he could gain power. His intentions also presented a scenario in which the plebeians were pleased with his course of action. Why? With the logic that states that all Roman people were or would become the slaves of Caesar due to his immense power. Thus, in Brutus’s mind, he is the liberator of the Roman people. Trying to woo the simple plebeians in the marketplace, he asks them to invest trust in him. Brutus makes clever rhetoric such as his emphasis and emotion on powerful words to convey his message. But what the reader must understand is that this man is nothing more than a corrupt politician. Brutus uses language in his favor, stating he killed Caesar not out of hate, but in fact because of his love of the Roman people. If one truly understands the key principles of all language and philosophy, then one must be able to tell that Brutus is doing nothing more than using a “double-talk” kind of approach towards the common man. Reality can be controlled. The reason behind this statement is simple- reality is controlled by keepers of the records. What this statement means is that any situation can be manipulated in order to favor one side or another. In the speech by Antony, the tide of reality pulls sharply out, exposing a beach of discontent and deceit. Antony starts his speech by saying that he is not there to praise the late emperor, but in fact accept the fact that Brutus is a praiseworthy man. However, Antony’s speech begins to pull the tide of Brutus’s reality once Antony mentions that Caesar was his friend. It is this simple notion that changes Rome’s future forever. Antony goes on to state that Caesar had triumphed over many enemies, thus bringing power to the Romans and bringing much fortune.
Shakespeare’s complex play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar contains several tragic heroes; a tragic hero holds high political or social esteem yet possesses an obvious character flaw. This discernible hubris undoubtedly causes the character’s demise or a severe forfeiture, which forces the character to undergo an unfeigned moment of enlightenment and shear reconciliation. Brutus, one of these tragic heroes, is a devout friend of the great Julius Caesar, that is, until he makes many execrable decisions he will soon regret; he becomes involved in a plot to kill the omniscient ruler of Rome during 44 B.C. After committing the crime, Mark Antony, an avid, passionate follower of Caesar, is left alive under Brutus’s orders to take his revenge on the villains who killed his beloved Caesar. After Antony turns a rioting Rome on him and wages war against him and the conspirators, Brutus falls by his own hand, turning the very sword he slaughtered Caesar with against himself. Brutus is unquestionably the tragic hero in this play because he has an innumerable amount of character flaws, he falls because of these flaws, and then comes to grips with them as he bleeds on the planes of Philippi.
Playwright, William Shakespeare, in the play Julius Caesar, utilizes many instances of rhetorical devices through the actions and speech of Caesar's right-hand man, Mark Antony. In the given excerpt, Antony demonstrates several of those rhetorical devices such as verbal irony, sarcasm, logos, ethos, and pathos which allows him to sway the plebeians. The central purpose of Mark Antony’s funeral speech is to persuade his audience into believing that Caesar had no ill intentions while manipulating the plebeians into starting a rebellion against their new enemies, Brutus and the conspirators.
Mark Antony’s speech, whose aim is to counter Brutus’ speech, enlightens the crowd on the unjust murder of Caesar. Though he never directly communicates to the crowd of his feeling towards the conspirators, Antony was able to effectively convey to the crowd, through the use of verbal irony and other stylistic devices/techniques in his speech, his true views of the assassination. Moreover, Antony was able to shrewdly emphasize his belief of the undeserved assassination of Caesar through the wide use of epiphoral and anaphoral structure in his speech. Antony emphasizes the wrongdoings of Brutus and Cassius through the ingenious use of the epistrophe along with verbal irony as he notes that “I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong” (III, ii, 125). Moreover, he stresses the importance of punishi...
The most predominate and important aspect In the play Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare are the speeches given to the Roman citizens by Brutus and Antony, the two main charaters, following the death of Caesar. Brutus and Antony both spoke to the crowd,using the same rhetorical devices to express their thoughts. Both speakers used the three classical appeals employed in the speeches: ethos, which is an appeal to credibility; pathos, which is an appeal to the emotion of the audience; and logos, which is an appeal to the content and arrangement of the argument itself. Even though both speeches have the same structure Antony’s speech is significantly more effective than Brutus’s.
“Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.” (3.2.24) This quote reflects the motive of Brutus for the assassination of his friend, Caesar. I believe Brutus killed him not out of disrespect, but in a selfless act to protect Rome from the decree of Caesar yet to come. I also believe that he did this out of force from the manipulation from his “friend” Cassius. In Shakespeare's “Julius Caesar”, Brutus’ two most significant characteristics are virtue and unconscious hypocrisy. In order to fully understand these characteristics, it is necessary to analyze all other contributing characteristics, the manipulation of friendship that Cassius uses against him, and the motivations for
his ally not for who he is, but what he could become. It is for this
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare is an intimate portrayal of the famed assassination of Julius Caesar and the complex inner workings of the men who committed the crime. In one particularly revealing scene, two of the men closest to Caesar, one a conspirator in his murder and one his second-in command, give orations for the deceased. Despite being simple in appearance, these two speeches do much of the work in developing and exposing the two characters in question. Though both have a love for Caesar, Mark Antony's is mixed with a selfish desire for power, while Brutus' is pure in nature, brought to a screeching halt by his overpowering stoicism. These starkly-contrasted personalities influence the whole of the play, leading to its tragic-but-inevitable end.
In the play the Life and Death of Julius Caesar (just as in all of Shakespeare’s tragedies) there is much death, much tragedy, and of course, a tragic hero. However unlike most of Shakespeare’s plays this time the tragic hero is not particularly obvious. Throughout the play a few main characters present themselves as possibilities for being the tragic hero. But as being a tragic hero is not only having a tragic flaw but also entails much more, there really is only one person to fit the mold. The character Brutus is born into power and is higher/better then we are. He has a tragic flaw that causes his downfall and at the end he realizes his mistake (a trait none of the other characters can really claim).
Shakespeare, William. “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.” Elements of Literature: Kylene Beers. Austin: Holt, 2009. 842-963. Print.
In his speech, Brutus appeals to the loyalism of his audience by making intertwining arguments of ethos, pathos, and logos. He begins by establishing his ethos by asserting his status as an honorable fellow Roman worthy of their respect. He expands on this ethos by dividing it into three parts: his love of Caesar, his loyalty to Rome, and his relationship to his audience. Brutus tells his audience that he was a “dear friend” to the man he murdered, invoking a pathetic sense of sympathy from his audience. However, as he says himself, it was “not that [he] loved Caesar less, but that [he] loved Rome more,” strengthening his ethos as a loyal countryman with the interests of his audience at heart. After establishing an emotional connection to his audience and earning their trust, Brutus explains his logic
Brutus has several tragic flaws. One of these tragic flaws is how he trusts people a lot. Brutus says that he “know[s] that we shall have [Antony] well to a friend” (1140). He trusts Antony will be a friend of the conspirators, yet he seems to not realize that Antony is obliviously against them, because they killed his friend. Brutus trusts Antony so much, that he lets Antony speak to the public alone. Antony turns the people against Brutus and the conspirators, leading to the wars where Brutus takes his own life. Brutus also receives letters, supposedly from the people of Rome. As he reads the letter out loud, Brutus remarks “‘Speak, strike, redress!’ Am I entreated to speak and strike? O Rome, I make thee promise, if thy redress will follow, thy receivest thy full petition at the hand of Brutus” (1118).
In William Shakespeare's play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, two speeches are given to the people of Rome about Caesar's death. In Act 3, Scene 2 of this play Brutus and Antony both try to sway the minds of the Romans toward their views. Brutus tried to make the people believe he killed Caesar for a noble cause. Antony tried to persuade the people that the conspirators committed an act of brutality toward Caesar and were traitors. The effectiveness and ineffectiveness of both Antony's and Brutus's speech to the people are conveyed through tone and rhetorical devices.
In William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Mark Antony—a loyal friend to Julius Caesar, the former emperor of Rome—gives a speech to the Roman commoners in order to persuade them to turn against Brutus, for Brutus and the conspirators had slain Caesar. Antony’s uses rough and sharp diction, a scornful tone, and honest anecdotes in order to achieve his purpose of manipulating the common people to take his side.
Manipulation influences decisions and changes others’ thoughts. In The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, manipulative language acts prominently between the characters. Brutus struggles to decide if the safety of the Roman Republic appears more important than his friendship with Julius Caesar. Cassius tries to persuade him to join the conspiracy that decides to kill Caesar. Envious of Julius Caesar’s power, the Senators believes that when Caesar becomes ruler, the change of government forever affects Rome. Brutus agrees that it seems for the best of Rome for Caesar never to become dictator, but he never wishes to change his opinion on his death. In a persuasive manner, Cassius sends anonymous letters to Brutus to convince him to join the conspiracy. The conspiracy consists of senators and aristocrats who gather to converse about the Julius Caesar’s assassination. Cassius nominates Brutus as the leader of the conspiracy in order to gain his vote. They decide to kill Caesar on “the Ides of March.” On the morning of March 15th, Caesar’s wife persuades him to stay home because of an eerie dream. Decius, a conspirator, convinces him that the dream retains good omens. In a rush to become king, Caesar goes to the Capitol where the conspirators murder him. Therefore, Antony begs to speak at his funeral where he convinces the plebeians that Caesar never means harm. At this point, Antony declares war on the Caesar’s killers. In the end, he defeats Brutus and Cassius, and the two conspirators kill themselves. In The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare declares that language expresses a powerful weapon, and in the hands of a skilled person, it manipulates others through the use of foreshadowing, imagery, and verbal irony.
“Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare is the story of the assassination of Julius Caesar. Two speeches were made after his death, one being by Mark Antony. He uses many rhetorical devices in this speech to counter the previous speech and persuade the crowd that the conspirators who killed Caesar were wrong. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion and these many devices strengthen this by making points and highlighting flaws. Antony uses many rhetorical devices, all of which are used to persuade the crowd that the conspirators are wrong and Caesar did not need to be killed.