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Rhetorical Questions In Julius Caesar

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Can stabbing a person ever really be honorable? Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare represents this dilemma when Brutus and a group of conspirators decide to murder Julius Caesar to save Rome. As the rest of the play progresses the conspirators begin to realize that Rome will not realize what their side of the story was. Mark Antony took up the call to shut the conspirators down and persuade the people that Julius Caesar should not have been killed. In Julius Caesar by William Shakespear, Antony turns the crowd against Brutus and the other conspirators by using reputation to discredit them and rhetorical questions for the people to consider how Ceasar really lived his life.

Antony was determined to discredit the conspirators without …show more content…

He also used another rhetorical element called rhetorical questions. Rhetorical questions were important in this speech because it got the people to self-evaluate and really consider if they believe that Caesar 's actions justified for him to be murdered. Throughout Antony 's speech he is trying to discredit the conspirators who pose Ceasar as an ambitious man who will enslave everyone and lead Rome to ruin. Antony counters that by describing Ceasar as a person who will weep the loss of someone and asks the peoples if "this in Caesar seem[s] ambitious" (53). By Antony asking that question, the people are reevaluation everything they knew about Ceasar and are being swayed to believe that he was not ambitious. Antony also claims that he has the will of Ceasar and then says he would not read it, but it would be great for the people. When he says, "you will compel me then, to read the will", he is discretely reminding the people of something that would help his case and then twisting the situation so the people think it was their idea all along. Once the people get onto Caesars side, he reminds them about the people who killed Caesar by asking them "wherein hath Caesar thus deserved your love" (58) They phrase is reminding the people that Ceasar was wrongly killed and that they should do something about

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