Dialectical Journal III

DJ III JC

O Antony, beg not your death of us.

Though now we must appear bloody and cruel—

As by our hands and this our present act

You see we do—yet see you but our hands

And this the bleeding business they have done.

''Our hearts you see not. They are pitiful.''

And pity to the general wrong of Rome—

As fire drives out fire, so pity pity—

''Hath done this deed on Caesar. For your part,''

To you our swords have leaden points, Mark Antony.

Our arms in strength of malice and our hearts

Of brothers' temper do receive you in

With all kind love, good thoughts, and reverence.

Rephrase

Oh, Antony, please don’t beg us to kill you. I know we seem cruel right now, with our bloody hands and this deed that we’ve done, but you’ve only seen our bloody hands and not what’s in our hearts. Our hearts are full of sorrow for Caesar. But we feel even more sorrow, to the things he did wrong to Rome. These things made our sorrow for Caesar disappear, the way fire drives out fire, so that’s why we killed him. For you, our swords are blunt, they couldn’t harm you. Our arms are strong and cruel. As for our hearts, they are filled with love, and fill you with kind love, good thoughts, and reverence.

Respond

I fully understand how Brutus feels. He is faced with the young man that was best friends with the man he just killed. He feels even worse because Antony was begging Brutus to kill him. I know what it’s like to love someone but not agree with things they are doing. To Brutus, Rome was more important than his good friend Caesar. The way he responded to Antony was kind, and I wouldn’t imagine that a man saying these words just killed his best friend. Also, he uses fighting fire with fire, which nowadays is considered wrong. This makes me understand how different their times were.

Analyze

There is not many literary terms in this passage, but there are many things to analyze. This whole speech is Brutus-once again- showing internal conflict. He does use a very powerful simile that carries out the whole passage. He compares why the killed Caesar to fighting fire with fire. This carries on because he explains that he loved Caesar, but he hated what he did. So he had to fight the fire of is love with the fire of his hatred.