Ethos Pathos Logos In Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar: Effective Manipulation
Using Rhetorical Fallacies People can be very quick to misjudge a situation when they don’t understand the full story. Mark Antony knows this, effectively manipulating the crowd he gathered at Caesar's funeral. In the play, Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, Antony uses Pathos and Logos to create the more effective speech as a means to turn the people against Caesar’s murderers. Antony uses pathos to convince his audience that Brutus isn’t an honorable man. When he ascends the pulpit to speak at Caesar’s funeral, Antony repeatedly says that Brutus is an “honorable man”, (Act III, Scene II) but continues to disprove his own claim with multiple pieces of evidence. By disproving his claim while seeming compassionate, Antony makes his audience believe that he is caring yet naive. This allows the audience to let their guard down and think that their later ideas are their own. Antony uses the crowds’ emotions to convince them that Brutus and the Conspirators aren’t honorable. Antony says that he won’t do the Conspirators wrong by stirring up a mutiny. He would “rather choose to wrong the dead, to wrong myself, and

Antony contradicts Brutus’ claim that Caesar was ambitious by recalling the times such as when he “thrice presented him a kingly crown, which he did thrice refuse.”, asking the audience “was that ambition?”(Act III, Scene II). Antony uses examples like Caesar refusing the crown 3 times to prove that he wasn’t really ambitious and slowly turning the crowd against Brutus. Antony also proves that Caesar was not ambitious when he recalls that even “when the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept.” (Act III, Scene II). By showing how Caesar acts like and empathizes with the people, Antony uses pathos while still proving that Caesar wasn’t actually ambitious, debasing Brutus’ earlier claim and framing him as a liar and a fraud in the eyes of the