Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

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In the play Julius Caesar by Shakespeare, Brutus and Antony both display their sides of Caesar in hopes of getting the Plebeians to support them. Mark Antony, a friend of Caesars, effectively persuades the crowd that the conspirators are traitors rather than heroes while technically keeping his promise to avoid saying anything negative about them. Antony convinced the mob that Caesar cared for the common people by manipulating the definition of the words “honorable” and “ambitious,” and using props, thereby delivering the more effective speech in the end.

Antony asks many rhetorical questions to indirectly manipulate the meaning of the term “ambitious” which also sways the crowd against Brutus and the conspirators. Initially, Brutus accuses Caesar of being ambitious to explain one of the reasons for assassinating him. He assures the people that Caesar had, “tears for his love, joy for his fortune, honor for his valor, and death for his ambition.”(3.2.29-30) Brutus clearly establishes that he believed Caesar was hungry for power; this sets the stage up for Antony to easily oppose Brutus later in order to make Brutus look bad. The meaning of ambitious here is having a thirst of power, Caesar was killed because he was claimed to be ambitious. Considering this, Antony contradicts Brutus’s claim and causes the crowd to question Caesar’s motives and Brutus’s accuracy due to his kind actions. Antony tells the people that Caesar “hath brought many captives home to Rome/whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?”(3.2.97-99) Antony makes Brutus look like a liar by verifying that Caesar did good things instead of being hungry for power. He successfully changes the meaning of ambitious from a power-thirs...

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...low him even to the point that they will risk their lives to get revenge on the conspirators. The fact that Antony persuaded the people to do such things proves that Antony’s speech was more effective at reaching its goal of turning the people against the conspirators.

As a final point, Antony and Brutus both spoke at Caesar’s funeral to prove their reasoning’s to the people. Antony’s speech turned out to be the more effective one because he manipulates the words ambitious and honorable to contradict Brutus, he uses props to provide substantial evidence to the people, and his speech was more effective because it essentially persuaded the people to be on his side whereas Brutus did not convince the people of anything.

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.” Elements of Literature: Kylene Beers. Austin: Holt, 2009. 842-963. Print.

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