Julius Caesar Rhetorical Analysis Essay

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In the play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, written by William Shakespeare, Mark Antony who once was a dear and loyal friend to the late Julius Caesar, gains an impactful opportunity to showcase his masterful art of rhetoric when he provides a speech at Caesar’s funeral. In the plotline of the play, a man named Brutus is swayed into killing Caesar, his close friend; because he is prodded by other deceitful men who claim that the murder of Caesar would benefit the future and well-being of Rome. After the murder is successfully conducted, Brutus and the other conspirators bathe their hands in the blood of Caesar and simultaneously stimulate tension and chaos among the people of Rome. Mark Antony valiantly goes to see Caesar’s body and to also speak …show more content…

He accomplishes this while simultaneously constraining himself from being straightforward, which would ultimately cause him to break his promise that he would not make the conspirators seem clearly corrupted. Antony ironically repeats throughout that “Brutus is an honorable man” (IV.ii.95) a plethora of times, which alters the literal meaning of the diction because it is the exact opposite of what he truly means. The irony is heavily encompassed within these consistent statements of Brutus being “honorable”, because he is distinctly mocking his integrity with obvious hints of sarcasm, although the literal diction does not portray that same tone. Respectively, Antony chooses verbal irony to emphasize to the audience how Brutus is a traitor and to also ruin his credibility by mocking him in the sense that when he calls him an honorable man, he is implying an entirely different, negative, connotation that differs from the actuality of the words themselves. The audience will respond greatly to the verbal irony because afterwards, their former openness to accepting Brutus’ actions will shift and they will take Antony’s side of the situation. Furthermore, even more verbal irony is present throughout many sections of Antony’s speech. For instance, he points out, “the noble Brutus

Julius Caesar Rhetorical Analysis Essay
384 Words | 1 Pages
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984 Words | 2 Pages
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490 Words | 1 Pages
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686 Words | 2 Pages
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472 Words | 1 Pages
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772 Words | 2 Pages
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Julius Caesar Rhetorical Analysis Essay
535 Words | 2 Pages
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741 Words | 2 Pages
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853 Words | 2 Pages
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1039 Words | 3 Pages
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943 Words | 2 Pages
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Julius Caesar Rhetorical Analysis Essay