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Chase Ward
Mr. Johnson
Honors English II, Period 2
11 Feb 2015
Julius Caesar: Rhetoric Devices
A commercial about starving children in Africa are very persuasive. They appeal to a person’s emotions by showing a young African child who is struggling to live. They use the rhetoric strategy of pathos. Rhetoric is the persuasive argument using appeals based on logos, pathos, and ethos.
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, by William
Shakespeare, is a tragedy and shows wonderful examples of this. Although Brutus and
Antony made great speeches, Act 3 Scene 2 showed their best rhetoric.
Brutus speech was Julius Caesar’s funeral. He decided that is would be best if he cleared the air of what happened to the people’s beloved Caesar. Brutus gave this speech to show how dangerous Caesar is “...­as he was ambitious, I slew him…”
(3.2.28). His speech worked very well to sway the poor and rich citizens of Rome to the conspirators side.
At the beginning of Brutus's speech he used ethos to show the citizens of Rome that he was putting his honor on the line and would not have slain Caesar if he did not think it was right. “Believe me for mine honor…”(3.2.15). When he did this the people immediately thought that Brutus was noble and did this for a good reason. Later in his speech he used pathos to appeal to the citizen’s emotions by saying that he loved
Caesar but “... I loved Rome more” (3.2.23). He did this to get the crowd to understand

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that it had to be done. To emphasize this he used anaphora. He kept repeating “ I weep…. I rejoice… I honor…” (3.2.26). To show the people that he really cared about
Caesar.
Antony's speech was to show how honorable Brutus is but the real reason behind his speech is to persuade the fickle crowd to revolt against the conspirators. By the end of his speech the crowd turned into a bloodthirsty mob.
Antony used many rhetoric devices that affected the crowed in various ways. At the beginning of his speech he used a synecdoche to draw the crowds attention. Antony also used honorable as an anaphora to remind the crowd that it was Brutus who did this to the honorable Caesar. When he said " The evil that men