Shakespeare presents Brutus’ intentions by using metaphors to justify his thoughts and actions. He shows this in Act 2 Scene 1 where Brutus is speaking to Cassius and he says ‘To cut the head off and then hack the limbs’ and then a few lines later says ‘For Anthony is but a limb of Caesar’. Shakespeare uses the word ‘limb’ in the both the quotations and I think he uses it to describe Caesar and his group as pne entity. What I think Brutus explicitly means by this is that killing Caesar (the head) is enough and that killing the people around him is just unnecessary as they will no longer have power once Caesar is dead. However, I think that the quotation is a metaphor because the description resembles a hydra (a mythical creature which grows back twice the heads once one is cut off) and I think that once Caesar is killed , Cassius and Brutus may end up fighting for what’s left despite them being close.
React!