Julius Caesar: The Tragic Hero

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Aeschylus (Greek tragic dramatist, 525BC-456BC) said, “For this is tyranny’s disease, to trust no friends”. This is exactly what Julius Caesar should have done; not trusted his friends. In Julius Caesar written by William Shakespeare, it is often debated who deserves the role of the tragic hero is this tragedy. Caesar’s tragic flaws do lead to his death, but Brutus is the obvious tragic hero. Although Brutus has the characteristics of a great man such as; nobility, idealism and honesty, what makes him the tragic hero of Julius Caesar is his unassuming sincerity and trust. A tragic hero is defined as; (http://www2.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/poetics.html) usually of noble birth, hamartia (the tragic flaw that eventually leads to his downfall.), peripeteia (a reversal of fortune brought about by the hero’s tragic flaw)his actions result in an increase of self- awareness and self-knowledge, and the audience must feel pity and fear for this character. Brutus, as well as Caesar, are both impeccable candidates for a tragic hero. The difference is who was more tragic or which character evoked more pity and fear. Both Brutus and Caesar were born into noble families. The dissimilarity comes not with their beginning, but with their ending. The tragic flaw that led to Caesar’s death was his ambition for power. Brutus’s death was caused by his flaw of being too trusting based upon his idealistic, noble, and honest ideologies. The play never specifies that Caesar became fully aware of why he died but, Brutus definitely comes to the realization of what brought him to his death. That realization was that he killed Caesar for detestable reasoning and that at least he died for decent causation. Caesar and Brutus’s death both induce pity and fear. They were different feelings toward Caesar throughout the play. The initial assumption of Caesar’s death was substantiated

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