Category: Homework

How does Shakespeare present fate in Julius Caesar (essay)

January 28, 2015 / / 1 Comment

In the play Julius Caesar whether you’ve read it or watched it you can tell that Shakespeare has made fate one of the most important parts of the play e.g. One really important parts of the play is when the soothsayer says “Beware the ides of March!” This quotation portrays fate in the play. Throughout the play you will hear talk about fate pop-up when people are having a discussion. You will notice fate has a big part to play in Julius Caesar. In Julius Caesar fate is mostly portrayed as inevitable.

In act 5 scene 1 Cassius and Brutus are having a conversation just before they go to battle. When they are talking they refer to fate they are saying things like ” the gods today stand friendly, that we may, lovers in peace, lead on to our days to age!”. In this conversation Brutus says “The ides of March have begun.” He is saying they have begun and cannot be prevented. I think that the figurative language is connotation because Cassius is saying that god is associated with deciding your fate.

In the play Julius Caesar the characters refer to fate at many points. In act 3 scene 1 just before Caesar gets murdered there is figurative language when Caesar says “I’m as constant as the Northern star.” The type of figurative language that is used in this quote is a simile because he is using ‘as’ so he is comparing himself to the northern star. The northern star is important and stands out and Caesar is trying to say that he is as important as the northern star and that his fate is that he will remain that important.

My opinion of fate in the play Julius Caesar is that it is vital for the play, because quite a lot of the play revolves around fate. In the play, fate is used often but sometimes it might not be so clear because quite a lot of the time fate is portrayed in figurative language e.g. Similes, metaphors, personification, connotation and other forms of figurative language.

Fate is portrayed to be pre-determined. In the play characters can get punished for either believing in fate or not believing in fate. An example of a character being punished for not believing in fate is when Caesars wife tries to convince Caesar to not go to the senate because she had a dream that Caesar would get killed. Her dream was that a statue of Caesar had blood coming out of it and that people were bathing in but eventually Caesar ignored her dream which was a vision of Caesars fate and when Caesar got to the senate he was punished for not believing in fate by being killed by the conspirators. When Caesar says that he is as constant as the northern star he is saying that he is bigger than fate and is immovable and that Caesar thinks that fate cannot determine his future and that only he can control what he does and what happens to him.

What is being showed here is that if a character believes that he is bigger than fate and that he controls what his future is and what can happen is punished for believing that. The clear example of that was when Caesar said that he was as “Constant as the northern star.” He got punished for it.

 

The Road – Cormac McCarthy [Worksheet]

March 18, 2013 / / 0 Comments

1.
The Road can be interpreted as the setting for the result of a nuclear war and/or disaster. This could be the case on a close examination of the text. At first I believed this to be wrong, and that it was in fact the result of a mass volcanic eruption throughout America, but towards the end I believed that this may not have been the case. Firstly when the boy was born, the father looked out of the window and saw that the city was on fire. There was also no light, or a lack of sun rather, and everything was considerably covered in ash. This could have been the ‘nuclear winter’ and this was the permanent setting. Bodies were burnt to a crisp and the rivers and nearby lakes were foaming with ash. The father was also dying, as this was stated earlier in the book, this could have been the result of radiation poisoning. The reason the boy wasn’t dying was because he was born into a world where this was the norm, and therefore wouldn’t have known any different. This could have been a collision with an asteroid, and not anthropogenic such as a nuclear war. But this is still debatable and it is more than likely due to a war than anything else.
2.
There are many messages within The Road, and many are to do with the way we handle situations as people. I believe that the main point that McCarthy is trying to make, is that it doesn’t matter what scenario that us as humans are placed in, we will always survive through the toughest times. This is also relative in terms of family, and the power and the bond that the boy and man have between each other. Regardless of what they have to do, and the hard task the have been set, they will always fight through the toughest of times. The ‘fire’ that the father hands to his son to keep burning is symbolic of hope and shows that humanity will continue, generation after generation.
3.
‘On this road there are no god spoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world’ – This suggests that all of the good has been sucked out of the planet, and it is literally a ‘free-for-all’. This is shown when the boy is ‘taken hostage’ by the man, and he has to shoot the man to free him. This shows that there is no humanity left, and it is a fight to survive. In terms of the ash, this is a result of burning. In some cultures it is suggestive of a rebirth, and the on-going fight, but realistically it shows that what’s left is the end product of the fire.