Does a single villain exist? “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but y those who watch them without doing anything.” -Albert Einstein It becomes ever so apparent in the very beginning of the play [Julius Caesar] that many distrust the leadership, or rather, dictatorship of Caesar, one of the most influential and remembered figures in all of history. There is a feeling of dread and fear, a malicious and ruinous combination in many cases throughout the span of our short history. Most notably, we observe Cassius praising Brutus, which, in my personal opinion during my early reading, is a clever ploy devised to bring Brutus closer to Cassius, which just so happens to be true, as shown when Cassius tells Casca that, “-Three parts of him is ours already, and the man entire upon the next …show more content…
But the true villain of this tale isn’t man, it is man’s nature. Now, using Albert’s quote [above] as a frame of reference we can make the comparison that Cassius is the hero because he is acting on the evil he sees in the world around him. He is trying to make the world better, is he not? Even under his mistakenly zealous ways of doing so, isn’t it the thought that counts? If this is to be taken as fact, then reasonably Caesar is the villain of our story, is he not? Before we go and crucify our suspect, we must first look at why Cassius is trying to dethrone Caesar (“And after this let Caesar seat him sure, for we will shake him, or worse days endure.” [1.2.316-17]). From Cassius fear of their [Rome’s] new leader, a plot to remove the emperor arose, with Cassius at it’s leader. This small coup d'etat behavior is expected from Cassius because his opponent is