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Julius Caesar Rhetorical Appeal

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Julius Caesar is primarily about a leader who is betrayed by his senate and one of the people he trusts the most, Brutus, who lead a conspiracy to assassinate him. The assassination occurs due to Caesar's new power and its threat to the old republican institutions. After the conspirators murder Julius Caesar, Brutus and Mark Antony, a close friend of Caesar, made speeches at Caesar's funeral. Each tries to persuade the crowd to follow their explanation concerning the death. They both use different rhetorical appeals to win the crowd over and in this essay I will be comparing and contrasting those speeches.

Shakespeare uses the logo appeal through Brutus' speech, which means Brutus is giving a more rational speech and giving the crowd reasons …show more content…
It persuaded them to think murdering Caesar was a good thing, and that he only did it for their country. It made an impact because by the end they were chanting, "Live, Brutus, Live, Live!" As if what he did was out of honor. Overall his speech was very stoic above all emotion.

Mark Antony speech was a blank verse quite different from Brutus', his was given a more ethos and pathos appeal to the people of room. He started off with' "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him," where as hes asking for them to listen and not demanding but appealing to them as friends. Also he doesn't put Caesar down in any way during speech but stated why everyone loved him. His speech took a turn when using an example of epimone at the end, "Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man." He says that a few time letting the crowd figure it out that any ambitious person would have taken the crown but he didn't so he must have killed Caesar for a different reason. His criticism alone undermines Brutus. By the time he was done with his speech for Caesar they were shouting, "They were villians, murders!" All in all, his highly emotional speech incited rebellion and therefore caused more confusion for the towns people so they would not give Brutus

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