Power Of Speech In Julius Caesar Essay

Humanity has become the most dominant species on Earth due to our high intelligence and communication skills but our communication can also be used to easily manipulate and convince. This manipulation is shown when, Mark Antony delivered a deeply passionate and articulate speech at Caesar’s funeral, altering the political dynamics of the Rome in William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar. Antony uses his words to influence the Roman people. He effectively uses rhetorical devices to prove his point and gain the support of the citizens. Antony also uses the rhetorical device of Pathos to invoke emotion in the crowd and Ethos to use Brutus’ and the conspirator’s reputation against them.

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.

Murder can be defined as the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Brutus and his conspirators murder Caesar and convince the people of Rome that it was a justified act. Mark Antony, a friend of Caesar, seeks justice for his dear friend. In his funeral speech Antony uses rhetorical strategies to persuade the Romans that Caesar’s death was unjustified. Through persuasion, Antony uses the strategies: rhetorical questions, verbal irony and the appeal of pathos to sway the Romans to believe that Caesar’s murder was unjust. Furthermore, Antony’s use of rhetorical questions has an effect on the opinions of the citizens of Rome.

Without the use of persuasion on Cassius’s behalf, Brutus would have never fallen into the conspiracy, and because Brutus is ultimately the one killing Caesar, without Brutus’s role in the conspiracy, the events of this tragedy would follow entirely different routes. This shows that Cassius takes advantage of the the effects of flattering on Brutus and manipulated into joining the conspiracy. Another use of persuasion is shown by Decius, one of the conspirators. The day that the conspirators planned to kill Caesar almost did not happen if Decuis did not convince Caesar of going to the senate after all. One warning that Caesar receives is that his wife, Calphurnia, has a dream that there is a statue of Caesar with lots of holes with blood flowing through them and Romans came smiling, washing their hands in it.

“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.

The concept of persuasion through rhetoric and oratory has been used throughout history to manipulate the poor and disenfranchised. In Act Three, Scene Two of Julius Caesar, Shakespeare used Brutus and Marc Anthony to emphasize the power that properly used words have on the uneducated. When Brutus spoke to the crowd of plebeians, he used

In this world, few skills carry with them greater power than the skill of speaking to a crowd. A good speech can shatter the dreams or raise the hopes of millions. It can raise civilizations, or it can destroy them. The right speech can change the world. And the legendary writer William Shakespeare knew this well, as we see in one of his most popular plays; Julius Caesar. In the play, this power speech has is seen most heavily in the life of Brutus, who was not only manipulated by the words of others time after time, but tried to sway others with his own words, with some success even, but was often ruined by the even stronger rhetoric of others or perhaps by other events later on.

In the play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare; two erudite men name Antony and Brutus give an endless speech to the citizens of Rome using the emotions of the citizen to claim power and punish the senate that did the murder of Julius Caesar.In Shakespeareś Julius Caesar, Antonyś speech is more effective than Brutus´s because Antony use pathos to get the citizens to get riled up and question Brutus and hate him for what he did to Caesar .

The most predominate and important aspect In the play Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare are the speeches given to the Roman citizens by Brutus and Antony, the two main charaters, following the death of Caesar. Brutus and Antony both spoke to the crowd,using the same rhetorical devices to express their thoughts. Both speakers used the three classical appeals employed in the speeches: ethos, which is an appeal to credibility; pathos, which is an appeal to the emotion of the audience; and logos, which is an appeal to the content and arrangement of the argument itself. Even though both speeches have the same structure Antony’s speech is significantly more effective than Brutus’s.

In the play Julius Caesar written by William Shakespeare, two of Caesar’s senators, Brutus and Antony, arrange to give speeches at his funeral to explain Caesar’s death to the Roman citizens. Brutus provides more effective uses of rhetorical techniques like pathos, repetition, and rhetorical questions that in turn make his speech more persuasive to the audience. The first and most used rhetorical technique that is used throughout Brutus’s speech is pathos. Pathos is a quality to evoke emotions. When he says things like “die all slaves” and “free all men” stimulate a sense of fear among the citizens.

Mark Antony and Marcus Brutus from the play of “Julius Caesar” written by William Shakespeare, both try to persuade their audience if Julius Caesar is ambitious or a noble man. They both use rhetorical devices and persuasion very well, but unlike Brutus, Mark Antony is more persuasive in convincing his audience because he appeals to the audience’s emotions by embedding rhetorical questions, physically displaying emotions and sympathy, and capitalizing on his relations with Caesar throughout his funeral speech.

Almost every successful orator, or public speaker, uses the art of rhetoric to influence his or her audience.  If it is used correctly, the use of rhetorical devices such as logos, ethos and pathos can be very beneficial while trying to persuade a large audience.   During The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Antony and Brutus both give speeches to a crowd of Roman citizens.  Antony uses the art of rhetoric correctly, therefore his speech was more influential than Brutus’s speech was.

In the tragic play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, the ruler of Rome, Julius Caesar, is stabbed to death by some of his so-called friends. Brutus, one of Caesar's best friends, is approached by some of the other senators to join the conspiracy to kill Caesar. Brutus weighs his options and decides to join the conspirators for the good of Rome. At Caesars's funeral, Brutus gives a speech to convince the citizens that the conspirators were right to kill Caesar. In contrast, Antony gives a speech to convince the Romans that there was no real reason to kill Caesar. Both characters try to persuade the audience, but they achieve different tones using literary and rhetorical devices. The tone of Brutus' speech is prideful, while the tone of Antony's speech is dramatic and inflammatory.

In The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, rhetorical devices are commonly used to persuade the audience. During the speeches many devices were effectively used to convince the Romans to choose the side of the argument being presented. Mark Antony’s speech ended up being more effective than Brutus’s due to his use of pathos throughout to help his point be made that Caesar did not deserve to

Cassius, Brutus, and Antony use rhetoric successfully in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, albeit each differently and for different causes. Each of these men uses his skills in rhetoric to convince each other and at some points the entire population of Rome to follow his beliefs. However, each of these men has different motivations to do so, as well as different characteristics and general worldviews.