The Tragedy of Julius Caesar chronicles the final years of the Roman Republic. This was a time of great political and civic turmoil. Nearly all major political figures of the day participated in some form of political deception. From the killing of an innocent man because of his name to assassination, no act was deemed too immoral, and no moral boundary was left uncrossed. Amidst all of this chaos one character stands above the rest. Antony is the most manipulative character because he is able to hide his true intentions from and falsely befriend the conspirators and trick them into allowing him to speak at Caesar’s funeral. Antony exploits this opportunity as a medium through which to get revenge on the conspirators, and uses numerous deceptive techniques in this speech in order to control the public. Antony’s first display of manipulation is his false alliance and “cunning [bargaining]” with the conspirators (Bevington 1023). Rather than try to convince every conspirator of his good intentions, he recognizes that he can “avoid the more difficult questions” of Cassius by “[directing] his attention to the more powerful and gullible Brutus” (Perry 81). Antony, knowing that “Brutus wants to believe that [Antony] will join the conspirators’ cause,... takes advantage of Brutus’ hope” (Perry 81). He claims to harbor no ill intentions towards the conspirators as long as he is to receive adequate reasoning for Caesar’s assassination . By pretending to confirm Brutus’ assumption
After Brutus finishes his speech, Antony speaks about his opinion on the issue; unlike Brutus, Antony acts slyly and communicates a very manipulative tone to persuade the Romans to rebel. Because of Antony's use of parallelism, he creates vivid reasoning for his speech. He states, “ I come here to bury Caesar, not to praise him” (III.ii.44). By using this device, he shows the people of Rome that he isn't praising Caesar, he is putting the leader to rest. This particular line creates a very manipulative tone, because his speech is all about what great this Caesar has done and how he wants to rebel against the conspirators. Further more, Antony uses a lot of irony to slyly get his point across. One example that he uses throughout the speech is “Yet Brutus says he was ambitious, and Brutus is a honorable man” (III.ii.44). Because of the repitition of this ironic statement, the meaning of it changes and intensifies. At first, his tone was sincere, but as the speech progresses, you can see his sarcastic tone increases. Antony does this because he has to use this device to surpass the regulations of Brutus, as well as make the romans listen. Lastly, he uses personification to give life and further meaning to a word. Early in the speech, Antony says, “The evil
In truth, Antony only wants to gain the conspirator’s trust to be able to defeat them through the citizens of Rome. We can easily see how Brutus was manipulated in this part of the story by the conspirators and Mark Antony. Brutus has great sense of honour and he thinks that others think the same way. It is this weakness in Brutus that makes him so easy to be manipulated.
The play Julius Caesar written by William Shakespeare in 1599, is about the murder of Julius Caesar, a great Roman general who conjured many lands, and helped to form the Great Empire that we read about today. Caesar was to be crowned king of Rome, but he was savagely murdered by a group of conspirators before he received the crown. After Caesar's brutal murder, Brutus a very honourable Roman, who helped in in Caesar's death, and Mark Antony, one of Caesar's closest friends, gave speeches at Caesar's funeral, trying to convince the crowd to agree with them and turn against the other. Brutus and Antony both made convincing speeches, but Antony came out on top, because Antony let the people make up their own mind, by appealing to their emotions.
In Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar, Portia uses repetition, rhetorical questions, and parallelism in order to persuade Brutus to tell his secret. Portia uses repetition to get Brutus’ attention and to show him how much she wants to know the secret. Pleading, Portia urges, “I should not need, if you were gentle Brutus. / Within the bond of marriage, tell me, Brutus” (2.1.301,302). By using repetition she gets Brutus’ attention so he knows she is talking to him. If Portia did not repeat his name, Brutus would not be as inclined to listen to her. With Portia stating his name more than once he is focused on her and knows that what she is saying is vital. In this part of Portia’s speech she uses pathos. She persuades Brutus by bringing up their
In William Shakespeare's play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, two speeches are given to the people of Rome about Caesar's death. In Act 3, Scene 2 of this play Brutus and Antony both try to sway the minds of the Romans toward their views. Brutus tried to make the people believe he killed Caesar for a noble cause. Antony tried to persuade the people that the conspirators committed an act of brutality toward Caesar and were traitors. The effectiveness and ineffectiveness of both Antony's and Brutus's speech to the people are conveyed through tone and rhetorical devices.
In the play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, an honorable man, Brutus, is planning to overthrow the soon to be king, Julius Caesar. Brutus is persuaded by Cassius that Caesar is a liar, too ambitious, weak, and not fit to be Rome’s king. Brutus soon believed Cassius, and they and the conspirators made a plan to kill Caesar. After Caesar’s death, Brutus planned to justify his actions of killing Caesar at his funeral in his speech to the people. After Brutus’s speech, the citizens of Rome were all in agreement that Brutus did the right thing for Rome. Brutus then decides to allow Caesar’s best friend, Antony, to speak in honor of Caesar. Antony speaks, and he convinces the citizens that Brutus’s actions were unjust and turned the people against Brutus.
In Julius Caesar, one of William Shakespeare’s more well-known plays, Marc Antony finds himself persuading a crowd who believe Caesar’s death was for the benefit of the Roman people. Antony had implored “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears” in an attempt to sway the crowd to give credence to his belief that Caesar’s death is a tragedy to the Roman folk and create a mutual bond between him and the crowd. This bond created by Antony is one of the very few times his speech dips into the realm of ethical appeals. The crowd of Romans had been originally convinced by the three main conspirators, mainly by Brutus, that Caesar’s death was to the benefit of all the Romans by portraying Caesar as a tyrant. Robert P. Yagelski had stated in chapter 8 of his book “rhetoric is the art of identifying the available means of persuasion. Antony had found which avenue to take and predominantly used pathos to manipulate the simple-minded folk to seek revenge and give the same sentence to the conspirators and Caesar had received.
“The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force” according to Adolf Hitler, a master in rhetoric, who was able to sway the people of Germany into electing him as chancellor, and who was able to brain wash an army into creating the biggest mass genocide on the planet. This type of strategy is mimicked by Mark Antony in William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. Mark Antony’s extensive knowledge of rhetorical strategies, such as appeal to the emotions of the commoners, knowledge of topic and reputation, and syntactical devices eclipse Brutus’ reasoning for killing Julius Caesar and wins over the Roman commoners.
Many people know that Julius Caesar was betrayed and killed by many people who he had thought to be his friends. Some less common knowledge is that he did still have friends and others who stayed loyal to him. One man named Mark Antony was the most loyal of them all, even after Caesar’s death. When he found out Caesar had been killed, he began plotting to get on the traitor’s good sides and make it seem as if he had joined them so that he could convince the citizens to fight against them with him. He deceived the traitors and convinced them to let him speak at Caesar’s funeral, and in this speech he turned the citizens against them using very powerful rhetorical skills. After he had drove the traitors from the city, he took control of the city and led them to victory in a war against the conspirator’s armies. These are three telling examples that prove Antony’s skill and potential as a leader.
The Roman senators all took part in betraying Caesar by murdering him. One of the main people involved, Brutus, held a funeral service for the deceased Caesar along with a brief speech. One of Julius Caesar's main companions who loved him dearly, Antony, also gave a speech that lasted much longer. After looking through the ethos, logos, and pathos mentioned in this story, it is obvious that Antony is more persuasive.
Antony, another Julius Caesar character, employs three Machiavellian skills: using fickleness to his advantage,“...while you treat them well, they are yours” (Prince 3), and ruling by fear. Antony’s objective was revenge toward the conspirators for killing Caesar. Antony also successfully used the fickleness of the Roman people to his advantage. After Brutus explained why the conspirators had killed Caesar, the crowd was understanding and agreed with the conspirator’s actions. The Roman peasants are convinced; they even want Brutus as their new emperor, with better qualities than Caesar. The plebians say, “Caesar’s better parts / Shall be crowned in Brutus” (3.2.54-55). But the level of the masses’ support for Brutus did not deter Antony’s opinion of the wrongdoing of the conspirators. In Antony’s speech, he spoke both confidently and assertively, which led to Antony convincing the crowd to support his cause and fight against the conspirators. Additionally, in Machiavellian style, Antony understands the crowd’s perspective; they need praise to believe in Antony’s cause. Antony appeased the Roman masses when Antony
Cassius uses many rhetorical devices to effectively accomplish their intended purpose in the given audience. He does this by including rhetorical devices such as imagery. Cassius made Casca trust him and collaborate together with the use of imagery. Cassius spoke to Casca, he wanted him on his time and in order to do that he had to make him believe that Caesar was no good. The thunderstorm also plays a big role in this because Cassius makes Casca understand that the thunderstorm is occuring due to Caesar. Caesar states,
The conspirators all come to realize a situation that could potentially ruin all their plans, and become a dangerous factor, that Antony is nowhere to be found. They are all naive in the sense that Caesar’s murder will bring peace and freedom to Rome, when in fact, it will only cause more problems to arise; Caesar’s right hand man, Antony, will be the one takes over and causes issues in the capitol with his sense of righteousness. Putting Antony’s perspective into view, he is unusually calm. After all that has happened, Antony’s feelings are still not clear to the readers, so it is not until he views Caesar’s dead body and sees his murders bathed in his blood, that his feelings come to light. Antony is what someone would call the “perfect survivor,” even in the mere minutes of being in the presence of his kings’ dead corpse, he is already having thoughts of what to do next, and even having ones of revenge for his king. Managing to cover his feelings of seething anger and a seek for revenge, quite skillfully to say the least, he convinces the conspirators that he is an ally. Which then can be said that the conspirators are also naive to believe the king’s right hand man would be their ally; Brutus’s statement, "I know that we shall have him well to friend," (JC III.i.38) reassures the men even further.
The epic poem Julius Caesar written by William Shakespeare tells the story of Caesar, the ancient Roman dictator, and his story of how he also became king of Rome. Unfortunately, Caesar gets murdered by his “friends” before he could become crowned. His killing affected many people, one of which was his dear friend Mark Antony. Antony and Caesar worked together and through that they became good friends; so when Caesar died Antony wanted his revenge on the killers, aka conspirators. Moreover, Antony decided to speak at Caesar’s funeral and that speech helped Antony get his revenge on the conspirators. Consequently, through the power of persuasion and truth telling, Antony was able to get revenge on the conspirators for killing Caesar by telling
Marc Antony shows early on in Shakespeare’s play of Julius Caesar, that he is a master manipulator. (Topic sentence) Antony was able to convince the crowd of commoners that Brutus, Cassius, and all of the other conspirators are evil men and killed their beloved Caesar out of pure hate. Antony’s ability to deceive others only becomes stronger as the story progresses. After civil war had broken out, Antony further proves that he is not one to be trusted by betraying a man that was thought to be his friend. Once he had driven the commoners into an act of rage against the conspirators, Antony gathered with Octavius and Lepidus in Caesar’s home to discuss their plan to avenge Caesar. The new triumvirate soon realize that they need money to carry