The Tragedy of Brutus in Shakespeares Julius Caesar :: Julius Caesar Essays

The Tragedy of Brutus in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar       Throughout many of Shakespeare's plays, a tragic hero is acknowledged: a courageous figure that possesses a tragic flaw, which eventually leads to his downfall. In The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, there have been arguments over who is in fact the tragic hero. Numerous people concur that Brutus is the tragic hero. However, others argue and name Julius Caesar as the tragic hero. After learning more about these two characters, a conclusion can be effortlessly drawn. Brutus is indeed the tragic hero of this play because when a person who possesses such heroic qualities dies, it is a true tragedy. In order to be the tragic hero the person must contain at least one tragic flaw, and Brutus contains many, but three of them stick out distinctively. His overconfidence along with his impatience and his nobility brought about Brutus's downfall. However, I believe that the main cause of his downfall was his naivety or the fact that he was an idealistic man.  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚     At the beginning of the play, I believe that Brutus was a much different man than he turned out to be. He did not want to take part in the conspiracy, but Cassius was very persuasive and convinced him that it was what needed to be done. After Brutus had decided to go along with the idea I think that he expected it all to happen too easily. He was too confident that their plan would work exactly like they had planned and that nothing could go wrong. Along with being overconfident, he was also a very impatient man. They had only generated their plan a couple days before and did take not enough time to realize the consequences of their actions. If they had taken more time to think things through and had planned for the worst to happen, I believe they would have been ready for what would happen next. After the killing of Caesar and rioting of the plebeians after the funeral the two armies were ready to fight, which again showed signs of impatience. When going into the battle Brutus advanced too quickly which led to the killing of many of his men and his own suicidal efforts.