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Julius Caesar Rhetorical Analysis Essay

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In the passage taken from William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, Mark Antony is conducting a funeral oration for Julius Caesar right after Brutus and other assassins have killed him. Mark Antony builds an argument to persuade his audience to mourn the death of Caesar and rebel against Caesar’s assassins (Brutus). In this funeral oration, Mark Antony uses clear logical flow, rhetorical elements, and diction to strengthen the persuasiveness of his argument.
Mark Antony uses clear logical flow for his oration. He starts off with an address to the audience, immediately drawing them in. He proceeds by mentioning the evil within Caesar and how honorable Brutus is for destroying such evil. This holds some level of truth in the audience’s mind, …show more content…

Towards the end of the oration, Mark Antony includes big exclamations and professions such as, “O judgement! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,/And men have …show more content…

Mark Antony uses words such as, “friend,” and “faithful” to describe Caesar which portrays him in an amiable light. Mark Antony strategically uses the word “honourable” to describe Brutus to make it seem like Brutus is good, but everytime Brutus is mentioned, it increases the amount of tension and ambiguity. Mark Antony also utilizes literary devices such as repetition to really emphasize certain points. For example, he repeats, “Brutus is an honourable man” several times throughout the oration. In the beginning this line is thought to be truth, but as the oration goes on, and Mark Antony mentions it more and more, it instills a sense of unease and uncertainty about just how honourable Brutus is for killing Caesar. This increases persuasiveness as now, the audience is uncertain about the good in Brutus. Furthermore, repetition is used again through Mark Antony’s questioning of whether or not Caesar is truly ambitious. Mark Antony asks these rhetorical questions after evidence that clearly shows that Caesar is not ambitious. Employing these questions emphasizes his argument that Caesar is not ambitious and should be mourned for. Lastly, Mark Antony uses a metaphor to describe just how much Caesar should be mourned for with his last statement regarding how his heart is in the coffin with Caesar. Of course, Mark Antony’s heart is not literally in the coffin, but

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