During the course of the play, characters die in different ways for different reasons. Show how Shakespeare makes any four of the deaths interesting.

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During the course of the play, characters die in different ways for different reasons. Show how Shakespeare makes any three of the deaths interesting.

        

Julius Caesar” being a historical tragedy, death is pre-eminent. Caesar’s death is a focal point of the plot around which revolved the death of Brutus, Cassius, Cinna the poet and Portia’s death.

        

JULIUS CAESAR

Caesar’s death is aided by supernatural portents. Prior to his death, there is thunder and lightning “all the sway of earth shakes, like a thing unfirm”, “a tempest dropping fire”, and Calpurnia’s dream which foretold Caesar’s death. All this created an eerie climax, since his was the only death foretold by a premonition.

        

The reader is left to wonder after the warnings from the soothsayer “Beware the Ides of March!” and Artemidorus “Caesar, beware of Brutus, take heed of Cassius…There is but one mind in all these men, and it is bent against Caesar” whether Caesar’s fate could have been changed had he listened to them.

        

Caesar’s death is sensational because he dies at the hands of men he called his “friends”. Several armed conspirators were needed to kill Caesar a single unarmed man. His dying words “Et tu, Brute?” are very poignant (deeply moving).

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Even though the readers know Caesar’s death is inevitable, due to the various warnings and omens, until the last moment, there is a thrilling suspense in which the reader wonders whether he will live or die. We feel sorry for him because he gives up only when he sees the ultimate betrayal of his friend Brutus.

CAIUS CASSIUS

In Act 5 Scene 3, Cassius learns from Pindarus about the battle and is told his friend Titinius is captured. “O coward that I am, to live so long, to see my best friend ta’en before my face.” Unable ...

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