Julius Caesar

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Julius Caesar
Themes play an integral role in the play Julius Caesar. The actions and the way that the characters express themselves define the themes in the play. The play is not comprised of one or two themes, but rather made up of an innumerable amount of them. A major theme in the play is fate. Fate is found from the smallest instance such as a dream to the prediction from a soothsayer. Another theme that is prevalent in the play is betrayal. Julius Caesar is betrayed along with many other people. Love is another theme that appears many times throughout the play. The love that is demonstrated in this play ranges from love between a husband and wife to the love for a country. Trust is another common theme in this play. Many characters in this play have trust in each other. They trust each other with their lives resulting in the death of many people. Loyalty is the final theme that is evident in this play. There are people who are loyal, and then there are people who are not loyal. The actions that these different characters make create a multitude of themes.
The theme that stands out the most in this play is fate. There is no doubt that there is divine intervention in this play. The destiny of many of the characters in this play have been prearranged because there are so many predictions or visions of the future that actually come true. For example, the soothsayer predicted that Julius Caesar was going to die on the Ides of March. (I. ii ll. 11-20) He did not make this prediction after he heard that Caesar was going to be assassinated, or the night before when everyone knew that he was going to die. He made this prediction many months in advance. The soothsayer knew that Caesar was going to die, because it was Caesar’s fate to die on the Ides of March. It has been predetermined that it was Caesar’s time to go on the Ides of March. Another instance of fate relating to the death of Caesar was the night before he died. His wife had an awful dream predicting that her husband was going to die in the house of the Senate the next day. Although Calpurnia told her husband of this, he chose to ignore resulting in his assassination. This is a strong example of fate because frequently throughout time people see the future in dreams.

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