Love and hate are presented in Julius Caesar by the characters: Calpurnia, Cassius, Brutus and Antony. I also believe the theme of love in Julius Caesar is honourable love and that In Julius Caesar ‘there is a thin line between love and hate’. There are similarities between love and hate as I feel Cassius’s jealousy for Caesar led him to hate him, Brutus’s love towards Caesar led him to hate him and Antony’s love for Caesar led him to hate the conspirators. There is also a theme of hamartia i.e. Cassius was a megalomaniacal, Caesar had too much humorous and so did Brutus. In Julius Caesar I believe there is a ‘wheel of fortune’ in play as throughout the play we see characters in various different stages of their career i.e. the highest and lowest point. At the beginning we see Caesar at the highest point of the wheel but by his death he’s at the lowest point, I feel Brutus then takes his place at highest point of the wheel but also by his death he’s at the lowest point of the wheel and finally Octavius Caesar takes his place at highest point of the wheel and in some way replace Julius Caesar.
Here dramatic monologue is shown as Cassius feels Caesar is portrayed as a god and he and the others are slaves to his will “And this man has now become a god, and Cassius is a wretched creature and must bend his back If Caesar carelessly but nod on him”. He doesn’t believe Caesar should be as powerful as he is or that Caesar name shouldn’t be more loved, respected or talked about than his or Brutus’ “Why should that name be more sounded more than yours”. These quotations show Cassius jealousy towards Caesar which leads him to hate Caesar as Cassius is envious and resentful of Caesar position in Rome to his “Like a colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves”.
These quotations show Brutus’s love towards Caesar which led him to hate him that he killed him “not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more”. These quotations also show Brutus’s motive for killing Caesar as he feels he was ambitious “As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him” and if allowed to be crowned king he would become too powerful, evil and go mad with power “think him as a serpent’s egg (which, hatch’d, would as his kind grow mischievous) and kill him in his shell”.
Brutus’s humorous is shown when he lets Antony live as he feels Antony won’t be a threat to him or conspirator and that will be weak without Caesar “for Antony is but a limb of Caesar” and “and for Mark Antony, think not of him, for he can do no more than Caesar’s arm when Caesar’s head is off”. However the literary device Irony is shown as it’s no coincidence that Antony is the one who stirs up the citizens to start the rebellion which leads to the civil war “we’ll mutiny”, “we’ll burn the house of Brutus and “now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot, take thou what course thou wilt!”
These quotations show Antony’s love towards Caesar which led him to hate the conspirators “my heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, and I must pause till it come back to me” and Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge. Antony also feels the conspirators didn’t kill Caesar for a noble cause but believes they did it out of jealousy that Caesar could become king and were in fear of his power “cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war, that his foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion” and “That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!”.
Love is also shown in act two scene two of Julius Caesar when Calpurnia; Caesar wife is persuading Caesar not to go to the senate as she has been having nightmares which she feels relates to Caesar and feels something bad is going to happen to him. These quotations show Calpurnia not wanting Caesar to leave the house, her nightmares/fears for Caesar and her trying persuade him to stay at home “You shall not stir out of your house today”, “besides the things that we have heard and seen, recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch. A lioness hath whelped in the streets, and graves have yawn’d and yielded up their dead; fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds in ranks and squadrons and right form of war, which drizzl’d blood upon the capitol; the noise of battle hurtled in the air, horses did neigh and ding men did groan, O Caesar, these things are beyond all use, and I do fear them”, “when beggars die there are no comets seen, the heavens blaze forth the death of princes” and “your wisdom is consum’d in confidence. Do not go forth today. Call it my fear that keeps you in the house, and not your own”.
At first Calpurnia was successful in persuading Caesar to stay at home however Decius Brutus then manipulated Caesar by playing on his humorous; Caesar allowed himself to be blinded by his arrogance to not see the danger ahead, in this instance Caesar humorous was his hamartia. These quotations show Caesar’s humorous “Caesar shall forth. The things that threaten’d me Ne’er look but on my back; when they shall see the face of Caesar they are vanished”, “cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of death but once” and “but I am constant as the northern star, of whose true- fix’d and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament”.
Shakespeare uses literary techniques when Antony is at Caesar funeral where he is using repetition, irony and sarcasm to show his hate for the conspirators and also to turn the crowd against the conspirators to start a rebellion. Antony doesn’t believe in the conspirator’s reason to kill Caesar as they claim he was ambitious but from Antony’s speech he clearly contradicts this and uses all three of those literary devices i.e. repetition and sarcasm is shown when Antony keeps referring to the conspirators as “honourable”. He doesn’t believe they’re honourable as he feels there reason to kill Caesar wasn’t a noble one and it was done out of jealousy not because he was ambitious.
Irony and sarcasm are used when Antony is telling us stories about Caesar which clearly shows he wasn’t ambitious and contradicts the conspirators “He hath brought many captives home to Rome, whose ransoms did the general coffers fill”, “when that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: ambition should be made of sterner stuff”, you did all see that on Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious and sure he is an honourable man”.
Honour and honourable love are shown in act 1, scene 2 in Julius Cesar by Brutus when speaking to Cassius “Set honour in one eye and death I’th’ other and I will look on both indifferently for let the gods so speed me as I love the name of honour more than I fear death” and “Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods”.
Honourable love is also shown in act 5, scene 3 when Brutus has found Cassius dead and says a few words over his body “are yet two Romans living such as thee? The last of all the Romans, fare thee well! It is impossible that ever Rome should breed thy fellow. Friends, I owe mo tears to this dead man than you shall see me pay. I shall find time, Cassius, I shall find time”.
How the authors’ ideas and characters respond to forces in the world about which they have no control other in Julius Caesar is shown in act 1, scene 3. Casca is speaking to Cicero overwhelmed with the sudden changes to Rome there is thunder, lighting, clouds, thunderbolts and lions in the capitol “threatening clouds”, “tempest dropping fire” and “against the capitol I met a lion”.
Robert browning presents that love can make you commit violent acts as in the laboratory and Porphyria’s lover both portray more of a darker side to love and I feel they both have similar themes of love within them which is toxic love and obsession. In both poems we see similarities of how strong feelings of love can make you commit hateful and violent acts towards your lover.
The laboratory is about a woman whose wants revenge on her lover as he left her. However she still loves him, but her love for her ex-partner has turned her evil, so evil that she wants to kill her lover’s lover and have her lover witness it to cause him enormous emotional pain “he is sure to remember her dying face!”. She is in a Lab making a poison and chanting a spell while she prepares the ‘potion’ which will kill the women who took her lover away from her. Her love has turned into a revengeful and bitter hatred for her ex-lover. She is not in a hurry to create the poison as she is trying to make it perfect “I am not in haste…I am here…to carry pure death”.
In the laboratory there is a sibilance in the poem; a repetition of s sounds which I feel fastens the tempo of the poem and helps show anxiety from the character and shows the reader that the character is doing her task quicker “grind away, moisten and mush up thy paste, pound at thy powder, — I am not in haste! Better sit thus, and observe thy strange things, than go where men wait me and dance at the King’s”.There is also a theme of violent verbs in the laboratory such as “poison”, “grind”, “mash” and “pound”
In the laboratory I feel there are themes of hate, jealousy, paranoia, revengeful love and toxic love. This quotation show jealousy and also paranoia “he is with her, and they know that I know where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow while they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear empty church, to pray god in, for them! — I am here”.
Hate and toxic love are shown by these quotations “and Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live! But to light a pastille, and Elise with her head and her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead!” and “not that I bid you spare her the pain: let death be felt and the proof remain: brand, burn up, bite into its grace— he is sure to remember her dying face!”
In Porphyria’s lover I believe the man is mentally ill and that the love shown in Porphyia has manesfested into something evil, an obsession that leads him to strangling his lover with her own hair that ends up killing her by strangling her with her own hair. In porphyria’s lover we can tell something bad is going to happen as when the lover walks into the room the atmosphere changes, “she shut the cold out and the storm”. She tells him she loves him, “she too weak for all her heart’s endeavour. The man then realises she is deeply in love with him “at last I knew Porphyria worshipped me” and that she is dependent on him and gives her life to him “that moment she was mine, mine”, this shows he wants to control her and doesn’t want her to experience this deep love about anybody else or be obsessed with another man and so decides to kill her. He feels like he has given her a wish to be with him forever ‘and thus we sit here together’ and now because she is dead she cannot love anyone else making him her last lover.
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