Thursday, April 17, 2014

What blunders does Brutus commit in "Julius Caesar"?How would you show that it is an idealist who commits these blunders?

Brutus is a tactical disaster. Crucially, he keeps getting major tactical decisions in the play wrong: and whether because of his idealism (that is, the belief that he is doing the right thing for Rome) or his self-regard (that is, the belief that he is doing the right thing for Rome) he doesn't seem to question himself at all.

The way to show that he commits these blunders for one reason or another is simply to justify in the text why you think he does it. I'd say he makes three major blunders in the play:

1) Over-ruling Cassius about killing Antony at the same time as Caesar.

2) Telling Portia about the conspiracy, leading to her suicide.

3) Over-ruling Cassius (again) in the tent-scene about the battle plan, which goes disastrously wrong and leads to both men's deaths.

I'll analyse the first-one to show you what I mean. Cassius makes a perfectly reasonable argument about murdering Antony:

We shall find of him
A shrewd contriver; and you knkow his means,
If he improve them, may well stretch so far
As to annoy us all...

No argument - Brutus just tells Cassius "no", because Antony is only a "limb of Caesar":

Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.
We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar
And in the spirit of men there is no blood

Pure idealism. Brutus is proved wrong when the murder creates so much blood that he cannot ignore it, and so tries to make it an idealistic symbol - the hand-washing.

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