The tragedy Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare’s misnomer plays, since the plot of the play in not centered around the character Julius Caesar; in fact, Caesar no longer appears in the play at all after Act III, unless we include his spectral form that appears later. Instead the story focuses on Brutus, one of the conspirators of Caesar’s assassination. Thus, Brutus appears to be the best possible candidate for the tragic hero of Julius Caesar. However, the concept of tragedy can be vague and subjective to the individual. Some may find that that Brutus does not possess enough qualities to be defined as a tragic figure. So what qualities make a character tragic and how does one go about defining a tragic hero? Aristotle offers a thorough and
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In Elizabethan England, a majority of business was conducted face to face, and involved a high level of trust that whoever you were buying or selling to would hold up their end of the bargain. Therefore, if you had a reputation of failing to come through on your business deals you would find yourself black-balled by the community and nobody would want to do business with you. As a result, your family would suffer and probably starve. Thus the Elizabethan audience could certainly relate to Brutus’ plights. While business is not always conducted on such a personal level today, reputation and honor are still important aspects in our contemporary society, such as in the armed forces where soldiers and generals alike have to trust one another completely, often with life-and-death situations. Brutus’ actions are consistently motivated by one sole purpose, to create an ideal Rome in an honorable fashion and serve his fellow Romans. Furthermore, Brutus’ firmness in his decisions, which causes him to ignore warnings from others, also develops into a trend throughout the play. In this way, we can also consider Brutus to be a consistent …show more content…
Brutus’s greatest virtue, as well as his most deadly flaw stems from his noble idealism for the good of Rome. Brutus has a code of ethics that he attempts to live by, but struggles to adhere to his code when faced with circumstances such as peer pressure from Cassius and the other conspirators. Brutus finds his reputation as a noble and honorable man very important. However, it leaves Brutus with a very innocent concept of the world. Brutus’ commitment to his principles, combined with his stubbornness at times to abide by them, repeatedly leads him to make grave errors in judgement that affect him and those around him adversely. In act III, scene I, a decision that can be perceived as naïve ignorance on Brutus’ part, Brutus ignores Cassius’ warnings and permits Antony to speak a funeral oration over Caesar’s body after Brutus delivers his own speech. The result of Brutus’ decision is that he loses the authority and credibility with the plebeians by having the last word on the murder, and thus enable Antony to be in a position where he can incite the fickle plebeians to revolt against Brutus and his fellow conspirators. There are further instances of Brutus’ insistent commitment to his morals, such as when he calls into question his relationship with Cassius by self-righteously
In Elizabethan England, a majority of business was conducted face to face, and involved a high level of trust that whoever you were buying or selling to would hold up their end of the bargain. Therefore, if you had a reputation of failing to come through on your business deals you would find yourself black-balled by the community and nobody would want to do business with you. As a result, your family would suffer and probably starve. Thus the Elizabethan audience could certainly relate to Brutus’ plights. While business is not always conducted on such a personal level today, reputation and honor are still important aspects in our contemporary society, such as in the armed forces where soldiers and generals alike have to trust one another completely, often with life-and-death situations. Brutus’ actions are consistently motivated by one sole purpose, to create an ideal Rome in an honorable fashion and serve his fellow Romans. Furthermore, Brutus’ firmness in his decisions, which causes him to ignore warnings from others, also develops into a trend throughout the play. In this way, we can also consider Brutus to be a consistent …show more content…
Brutus’s greatest virtue, as well as his most deadly flaw stems from his noble idealism for the good of Rome. Brutus has a code of ethics that he attempts to live by, but struggles to adhere to his code when faced with circumstances such as peer pressure from Cassius and the other conspirators. Brutus finds his reputation as a noble and honorable man very important. However, it leaves Brutus with a very innocent concept of the world. Brutus’ commitment to his principles, combined with his stubbornness at times to abide by them, repeatedly leads him to make grave errors in judgement that affect him and those around him adversely. In act III, scene I, a decision that can be perceived as naïve ignorance on Brutus’ part, Brutus ignores Cassius’ warnings and permits Antony to speak a funeral oration over Caesar’s body after Brutus delivers his own speech. The result of Brutus’ decision is that he loses the authority and credibility with the plebeians by having the last word on the murder, and thus enable Antony to be in a position where he can incite the fickle plebeians to revolt against Brutus and his fellow conspirators. There are further instances of Brutus’ insistent commitment to his morals, such as when he calls into question his relationship with Cassius by self-righteously