Brutus Tragic Flaw Quotes

In tragedy plays, there is always a tragic hero who has a tragic flaw in his personality such as excessive pride or poor judgement that leads to the hero’s downfall until he or she realizes it too late. In Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, Marcus Brutus is the tragic hero because of his tragic flaw, naivety and too trusting personality, which he eventually realizes but too late before he can fix anything.
William Shakespeare illustrates Brutus to have good morals but also displays Brutus’s naivety and too trusting personality which becomes his tragic flaw. For example, when Brutus has an internal conflict on deciding if Caesar should be emperor or not, Cassius took advantage of his confusion and naive personality to act as the “glass [that]

/ Why should that name be sounded more than yours[, Brutus]” (I, ii, 142-143). From this conversation, Brutus is shown to let his naive and too trusting personality overcome him to the point he could be guided by his close friends as seen with Cassius in following whatever path they consider to be noble. Moreover, Brutus is shown to have a weak personality, a characteristic of a tragic hero, since he is easily persuaded in following Cassius’s idea that Caesar is indeed not fit to rule Rome as an emperor and should be taken down, and this naivety of his leads to his own downfall by trusting the wrong person. In addition, due to this tragic flaw, he is taken advantage of by his friends. For instance, when Brutus trusts the words of Mark Antony, a man who is very loyal to Caesar and hates the conspirators who killed Caesar, as Brutus asks him to promise that he “shall not in [his] funeral speech blame [the conspirators]” (III, i, 245) to which Antony, taking advantage of Brutus’s flaw, says “[b]e it so, I do desire no more” (III, i, 253), but as Antony does his speech, he describes

From this simple promise, Brutus is shown to be naive enough to believe that every human, no matter the person’s relationship to him, always says the truth and never lies, leading to his downfall as seen here with Antony taking advantage of his moral to cause rallies, protests, and killings against the conspirators by breaking his promise to Brutus. Furthermore, this exemplifies Brutus’s poor judgment in thinking that maybe the person who hates him may simply lie to him which in this case led to his downfall proving him to be a tragic hero. Finally, Brutus realizes his flaw, which led to his downfall, near the end of the play and faces the consequences with dignity. Brutus recognizes that the “enemies have beat [them].. to a pit / … [and believes it is honorable] to leap in … [themselves] / than tarry till … [the enemies] push [them]” (V, v, 23-25), so he then asks his servant, Strato, to hold the knife that he, Brutus, will run into and finally says “Caesar, now be still / I kill’d not thee with half so good a will” (V, v, 50-51). This action of his shows Brutus’s understanding of the act he has committed and sees it as