The Tragic Hero in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

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The Tragic Hero in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

A tragic hero is a literary character who makes an error of judgment

or has a fatal flaw that, combined with fate and external forces,

brings on a tragedy. Brutus is the tragic hero in the book Julius

Caesar. In the play, Julius Caesar became a ruler in the triumphret in

Rome, yet there was a group of people who disliked this very much. The

group of people came together to become the conspirators and together

decided they would rather have Brutus, a friend of Caesars, become the

ruler of Rome. So after writing him fake letters from citizens

convincing him to be the ruler, he joined in the conspiracy and they

decided they had to assassinate Caesar. Brutus helped assassinate his

friend because he believed it was for the good of Rome, because Caesar

was a very bad ruler. The people of Rome, however, led by a friend of

Caesar named Marc Antony, ran the conspirators out of town for doing

such a tedious deed. After this, Antony and Brutus got into a war, and

Brutus ended up killing himself.

Brutus is a tragic hero because he is the character that made an error

of judgment and brought on a tragedy. In the beginning he was a

benevolent person and a good friend of Caesar. His error of judgment,

or mistake, was when he decided to join the conspiracy against Caesar

and assassinate him. This was a fatal mistake for him because in the

end his decision ends up making him kill himself. By betraying Caesar

like he did, it made one thing led to the other, everyone hated him

when he was just trying to do the right thing for Rome altogether, but

his plan backfired. By joining the conspiracy it changed him from a

very respectable citizen and friend into a deceitful person and

backstabbing friend to Caesar (literally). All of these things

combined led to the tragedy of many things. One tragedy that occurred

was Portia, Brutus’ wife, killed herself because he wasn’t around.

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