Comparing Power And Ambition In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

As Thomas C. Foster once stated in his book How To Read Literature Like A Professor, “Every language has a grammar, a set of rules that govern usage and meaning, and literary language is no different” (Foster XXV). Julius Caesar, a tragic play written by William Shakespeare, contrasts the difference between power and ambition in a leadership role that Caesar has. The play utilizes literary elements, as described in Foster’s book, to explain the polarity of the two distinctive themes and between Caesar and Brutus’s ambition . Shakespeare's diligent usage of tragic flaw, irony, and weather in his book Julius Caesar effectuates the death of Rome’s dictator.
The prominent source of Caesar’s tragic downfall is his tragic flaw- his ambition. After Caesar was killed, Brutus adds more to the reason of his death due to his tragic flaw, “Ambition’s debt is paid” (JC.III.i.85). In Act I, scene 2, Mark Antony offered Caesar the crown three times to question his ambition but he rejects it each time. Caesar’s ambition is covered in his mask of humility since he keeps turning down the crown to prove that he's not ambitious. He manipulates the citizens to think that his values his …show more content…
Shakespeare uses this element to establish the mood of foreboding, “I [Casca] have seen tempests when the scolding winds/ Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen/ The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam/ To be exalted with the threatening clouds/ But never till to-night, never till now/ Did I go through a tempest dropping fire” (JC.I.iii.5-10). Casca also points that it’s either the gods are in war or some mortal that angered the gods. This refers to Caesar and the storm is an omen to his death. Even with his wife, Calphurnia, indicating the bad omens -a lioness giving birth, bodies combusting, and graves cracking open-, Caesar refuses to acknowledge what’s happening and decides to depart for the Senate, unknowingly waiting for his