Julius Caesar Character Analysis

What Ignoring your Feelings Might Provoke:
The Conflict between Julius Caesar’s Political Persona and his Intuition
In The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar’s political persona drives him to ignore his wife, who represents his intuition and feelings, which affects the rest of the play by provoking his own death. This can be seen in the interaction that Caesar has with Calphurnia in Act II scene ii. During this dialogue Calphurnia urges Caesar to stay at home instead of going to the Senate House, and she almost convinces him, until Decius appears and leads him to his death. The character of Julius Caesar is constantly torn between his political persona and who he really is. Being an emperor, his behavior has to be a certain way while being in public. He is an idea, the idea of an emperor, and he even talks about himself in the third person “Caesar. Cry ‘Caesar.’ Speak, Caesar is turned to hear” (I.ii.17). As Kierkegaard says, “[if I tried] to imagine the public as a particular person I should perhaps think of one of the Roman emperors” (qtd. in Auden 128). Caesar is the embodiment of a Roman emperor when he is in public; he is the ideal of an emperor, fearless, strong and powerful “Caesar. I rather tell thee what is to be feared / than what I fear; for always I am Caesar.” (I.ii.211-212), or at least that is what he wants everyone else to think. This means that even if he is afraid or has a bad feeling about something, he will not show