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Discuss The Use Of Rhetorical Strategies In Julius Caesar

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In the book, Julius Caesar, an adaptation of one of William Shakespeare's famous plays, there are many key strategies used by the characters, including rhetorical strategies and persuasive techniques. One of the characters, who is a key contributor to this fact is Antony. A piece of his diction that can be analyzed for this is Antony’s speech to the civilians of Rome after Caesar was brutally murdered by their own people. Just a few key rhetorical strategies and persuasive techniques that we can take away from his speech are the use of personification, parallelism, and his act of using emotional appeal to the crowd, in other words, Pathos. Every one of these three things listed helped Mark Antony achieve his goal against the angry mob of citizens believing him. Personification. The. Personification is often perceived as a talking …show more content…

Another quote, one less straight-forward from Antony’s speech, is one that states, "And they would go and kiss dead Caesar’s wounds and dip their napkins in his sacred blood, (Shakespeare, lines 132-133). This quote, although not as clear as the previous one, also represents how Antony was intelligent in using a sense of emotional appeal to the Romans. This quote, although one that may seem vague, it reveals the idea that these Senators, the ones who were supposed to love Caesar the most, for they were the ones whose opinions mattered most, would wear a mask, appealing to feel sorry and remorse for Caesar, yet, factually speaking, after they murdered Caesar the dipped their swords and rubbed his blood up to their elbows, hence dipping their napkins and dirtying themselves along with their monstrous conscience. One can only imagine the reactions of the Roman people when they heard this quote, how their mouths would drop and they would be left

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