Julius Caesar Rhetorical Analysis

Shakespeare is no where close to modern text but, he does know how to achieve a certain purpose in writing which is used today. The play, Julius Caesar, has two very important speeches that are uttered by the characters Mark Antony and Brutus while at Caesar’s funeral. Brutus’ speech, which shows what should be his sorrow for Caesar’s death that he allowed, uses the rhetorical appeal pathos in order to get his point across. This appeal provides emotion to persuade the audience into believing the speaker. In this case, Brutus is making an effort to get the people of Rome to believe that Caesar had to die. That’s why throughout the speech, he continues to state how he is mourning the loss of his friend. There are also rhetorical strategies

hear me for my cause, and be silent, that you may hear: believe me for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour, that you may believe: and censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge.]” This repetition is used to get the audience to listen to what Brutus has to say about Caesar’s death. The type of rhetorical strategy is parallelism which is used to get the audience's attention. There is another example of this in Brutus’s speech when he says, “[Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended.]” Parallelism is used here in his speech to build up what he is trying to say and allows his audience to think about the statements that he continues to say. Since he keeps saying the same statement, it is going to stick into the peoples heads and make them think that it is an important statement since he said it so many times. This supports Brutus’s argument very

Antithesis is when you take two contrasting ideas to emphasize the differences between the two. One example is, “[--Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.]” In this quote Brutus is using two words that are different from each other. For this case it is less and more. Another example of antithesis is when Brutus states “[If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him I say, that Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his.]” Brutus is speaking about himself in the third person which makes it have the emotional connection. The quote is implying that Brutus loved Caesar as much as Caesar loved him. Why this quote is an example of antithesis is because Brutus uses both love and less than making it more impactful on the crowd giving the audience