Marcus Brutus as a Tragic Hero in Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare (Essay Example)

Many stories, both in fiction and reality, have a tragic hero. In the play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, Marcus Brutus is a tragic hero because of the way his fate was created, the divine elements throughout the story, and his own tragic flaw. These three elements are both the driving force of Brutus’s life and the cause of his ultimate downfall.

One of the reasons Brutus is a tragic hero is that he developed his destiny through his actions. Throughout his life, Brutus is faced with many opportunities to make choices. The decisions he makes are what ultimately decides his fate. In Act II, he decides not to kill Marc Antony, saying “...he can do no more than Caesar’s arm When Caesar’s head is cut off”(II, i, 6). Sparing Antony is what eventually leads to the battle at Philippi, where Brutus dies. Before this death, however, Brutus faces a physical representation of the repercussions of his choices when visited by the ghost Caesar. The ghost warns Brutus of his eventual death, prophesying that Brutus will join him in the afterlife in Philippi (IV, iii, 15). Ultimately, Brutus is at fault for the battle of Phillipi since he insisted on meeting Antony’s army there instead of waiting for the army to come to them; the ghost is corroborating that Brutus's death is his own fault. Brutus paved the road to his death with his own decisions.

There are divine elements that play a critical role in the story of Brutus as a tragic hero. In one instance, the people of Rome claim to be seeing warning omens on the streets of the city. Calpurnia, Caesar’s wife, recalls these unnatural occurrences, and says “A lioness hath whelped in the streets; and graves have yawn’d, and yielded up their dead”(II. ii. 11). Not only do these omens give the citizens a sense of dread and unease, but they also suggest that there is something divine at play. Furthermore, this theme of divinity affects individual characters as well. In the same scene, Calpurnia recounts a dream she had the night before the Ides of March, in which she saw the Romans washing their hands in Caesar’s blood, spouting out of his body like a fountain(II. ii. 13).  This foreshadows the way that Brutus and the conspirators are planning on stabbing Caesar that day. These prophetic occurrences display how there are divine and supernatural influences in Brutus’s story as a tragic hero

Finally, Brutus displays hamartia, or a tragic flaw, that leads to his ultimate demise. He constantly feels the need to defend his honor, and to do what he thinks is right, even if it will detrimentally affect him in the long run. He states this very blatantly by saying “I love the name of honour more than I fear death”(I. ii. 6). Consequently, Brutus is willing to defend his honor with his dying breath. Even when justifying the killing of Caesar to the citizens of Rome, he relies on his honor to be the reason the people believe him. He asks the people to rely on his honor as the reason to believe him, urging them to “believe me in mine honor, and have respect for mine honor”(III. ii. 11). Before the battle of Philippi, Brutus shows that his core beliefs come from a place of arrogance disguised as honor. He says to Cassius “...Thou canst not die by traitors’ hands, unless thou brinsgt them with thee”(V. i. 2). He refuses to give someone else this honor of killing him, so he beleives its better to commit suicide then to be killed. Brutus’s constant need to defend his honor is his tragic flaw, and is the reason he dies in the end. 

In Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, Brutus is a tragic hero because of the way that he created his own fate, the divine and supernatural influences in the story, and his hamartia. These factors were the reason Brutus died the way he did. There are many examples of tragic heros, and Marcus Brutus is an excellent illustration of what it means to be one.