Brutus Downfall

What makes a leader? Is it the confidence, sophistication, or knowing when to be realistic? In fact, a great leader must possess all of these characteristics, and even more. These are factors that would lead an individual to success. However, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Brutus’s weak qualities contributed to his downfall. Brutus contains many flaws, but three of them stick out distinctly. His weak qualities make him unfit to rule Rome because he self-doubts himself, rather than being confident, he is naïve, rather than sophisticated and finally he is idealistic, rather than realistic. All of these aspects make Brutus unfit to be a leader of Rome.

At the beginning of the play, I believe that Brutus was a much different man than he turned out to be. He did not want to take part in the conspiracy, but Cassius was very persuasive and convinced him that it was what needed to be done. After Brutus had decided to go along with the idea I think that he expected it all to happen too easily. He was too confident that their plan would work exactly like they had planned and that nothing could go wrong. Along with being overconfident, he was also a very impatient man. They had only generated their plan a couple days before and did take not enough time to realize the consequences of their actions. If they had taken more time to think things through and had planned for the worst to happen, I believe they would have been ready for what would happen next. After the killing of Caesar and rioting of the plebeians after the funeral the two armies were ready to fight, which again showed signs of impatience. When going into the battle Brutus advanced too quickly which led to the killing of many of his men and his own suicidal efforts.

    Many references were made as to why Brutus was an honorable man. He was very noble and everyone around him saw that. However, I believe they saw it as a good quality when in turn it led to his death.   In trying to do the right thing for the...