Author: S2KY

This scene is set in Antony’s house where Antony, Octavius and Lepidus meet to plot revenge against the conspirators. During their meeting, the topic of Lepidus’ brother comes up and they begin to discuss what to do with him but Lepidus consents to kill him. This shows that they were willing to kill anyone associated with the conspirators despite the relations they have with them.

Antony also then tells

In this scene, Antony is speaking to the crowd and he turns everyone against the conspirators. He does this through the use of metaphors. Furthermore, he manipulates the crowd by using Caesar’s ‘will’ which I believe to be a lie which Antony made to manupulate the views of the peoples. Antony also uses rhetorical questions to make the crowd question the conspirators as these are more like statements and they push their views more towards Antony’s.

‘Here was a Caesar! When comes such another?’

By using this rhetorical question, Antony is asking the people when another man like Caesar will exist but no one challenged this as no one felt as though Antony was saying something wrong. In other words, the crowd agreed with Antony and therefore made his speech stronger.

In terms of the lies that Antony used, he claimed that he found Caesar’s will in his closet and he used this lie to influence the people that the conspirators murdered Caesar out of cold blood. This is because a will left behind by Caesar in which 75 drachmae are supposedly meant to be given to the every person, would show that Caesar ‘loved’ the people and that what the conspirators were saying were actually lies. Furthermore, by telling the people that Caesar wanted to give them all 75 drachmae, it would cause the conspirators to become bankrupt as they had just taken over the Capitol.

Starter: 

fatuous – foolish, silly

Task One: 

A soldier moves his comrade into the light and warmth of the Sun in hope of him ‘waking up’. It used to wake him every day in World War One era France. However, the comrade is dead so he cannot wake up this time. The Sun is still able to shine on the plants and ‘wake’ them. Yet it cannot wake this fallen comrade.

Task Two:

Personification has been used in the poem to enhance meaning by providing more description without being too literal. An example being ‘The kind old Sun will know’. The author presents this by labelling the Sun as ‘kind’. However, it is only considered ‘kind’ as it provides warmth and light for our planet. Furthermore, the author also says that the ‘old Sun will know’. As we know, the Sun has existed long before we have so it is being described as some sort of all-knowing entity.

Task Three:

I think that the author has chosen to present nature and death alongside each other because they are both things that cannot exist without one another. Death is something that cannot be prevented and it is a part of nature. Nature is something that allows all life to live and without death, the idea of them both would not exist.

Task Four:

The poet presents death in Futility by using personification and metaphors to describe the setting and plot. In the first stanza, the poem says ‘Move him into the Sun’ to describe a soldier moving his fallen into the light and warmth of the Sun to wake him. Later in the stanza, it says ‘At home, whispering of fields half-sown’. This quotation is a metaphor and it develops on the idea that even the Sun cannot save this soldier whose life has been taken too soon, hence the ‘half-sown’. This was a common case in the First World War; it was around the time in which the poem was written.

Personification is used in the poem as shown in the second stanza; ‘O what made fatuous sunbeams toil to break earth’s sleep at all?’. In this quotation, the poet personifies both the Earth and the Sun. He describes the Sun as ‘fatuous’ which is a synonym for the word foolish. Furthermore, he describes the Earth as though it were able to sleep as a person would. From this, I can infer that the something has caused the Sun to wake the Earth from its slumber. This something could be the Sun rising as usual but due to the death of the soldier, it makes that morning seem more sombre.

In Act 3 Scene 1, Caesar is murdered by the conspirators after refusing to grant a petition to unbanish Cimber. Casca delivers the first stab as he says ‘Speak hands for me!’ as though he is telling his hands to stab Caesar. After everyone stabs him, Brutus delivers the final blow where Caesar then says ‘Et tu, Brute–Then fall Caesar!’. He says this as he sees Brutus (one of his closest associates) killing him and feels betrayal just as he dies.  Once the assassination has taken place, the conspirators contemplate what is to come as Caesar is dead. Furthermore, they allowed Mark Antony (Caesar’s right hand man) to survive as they felt no need to murder him too. Once Antony sees the dead body of Caesar, he has a soliloquy where he feels somewhat guilty about allowing the conspirators to get away with what they had done.

Shakespeare presents Caesar’s death in Act 3 Scene 1 by using language devices and sentence structure to show how his hubris leads to his downfall.

Shakespeare uses a metaphor on the 3rd line (in the extract). Caesar says ‘But I am constant as the northern star, Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality’. I think the language used here describes Caesar’s arrogance and is what causes the other characters to despise Caesar because he compares himself to the Northern star; a star commonly used for navigation at sea but with a religious association to Jesus Christ. This may mean that Caesar is comparing himself to God (as Jesus is the human embodiment of God). Furthermore, I also think that Caesar is also saying that he will never die or be forgotten hence the use of the words ‘constant and fix’ed’.

An interesting sentence structure which Shakespeare uses comes after Brutus gives Caesar the final stab during the assassination and Caesar says ‘Et tu, Brute?– Then fall, Caesar’. The first thing I can notice is the Latin at the beginning of the sentence; Caesar says ‘and you?’. This is quite peculiar as most of the play is in English and Shakespeare decided to use Latin instead of English. The next thing I can notice is that Caesar says ‘Then fall, Caesar’. From this I can infer that Caesar has come to a realisation that even the people he believed to be close to him have turned against him but his hubris is also shown in his final moments as he speaks of himself in third person (whether or not he means himself or Caesar as in leader).

This is how Shakespeare presents Caesar’s death.

Caesar’s hubris is used against him in Act 2 Scene 2 where he is speaking to his wife and promises not to see the Senate that day. However once Decius Brutus arrives to collect Caesar, his mind changes because Decius tells him that ‘the Senate have concluded to give this day a crown to mighty Caesar’. The quotation can be explicitly interpreted to tell us that the Caesar may lose the crown if he does not turn up. Once he realised this, he went against his wife and said ‘How foolish do your fears seem now, Calpurnia! I am ashamed I did yield to them’. This suggests that Caesar puts his pride above everything as he goes against his word to ‘claim’ the crown. However, it was a lie created by the conspirators to get Caesar in the right place for them to murder him.

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.

Submarine Warfare:

Submarines were first used in the First World War but were mainly used for attacking merchant ships supplying resources to the UK (because the UK is an island and requires most of its resources to be imported). However, in the Second World War, they were actually used for combat. One of the most well known submarines were the German U-boats; they were used to attack land and sea targets and also other submarines.

Women’s roles:

At first, women were mainly meant to take care of the family whilst the men were away at war. However, as more and more able-bodied men left to fight, there were more jobs which no one was working for. This led to the women taking the place of men and working in tough conditions such as: ammunition production, aircraft manufacturing and farming.

Task One:

The speaker is speaking in 1st person. I think that the speaker is speaking in present tense but mainly in the past tense. I also believe that the speaker is male as he mentions marrying a girl. Unless the character is homosexual and is female, I’m presuming that the character is heterosexual and is the opposite sex as this is the more common probability. I think that the message of the poem was that the speaker, regrets many events they have been involved in and is telling us (the reader) that you should think on your sins.

Task Two:

The second stanza starts with an ‘O’. This is a very peculiar start of a sentence as it is very similar to the language in the Shakespearean era. However, in this poem, I think that the ‘O’ is representing the pain or regret of the speaker because when you’d say ‘O’ in a sentence in the modern day, you would say ‘oh’ as in you understand or you’ve realised you’ve done something you didn’t intend to. So I believe that in this case, it is used to show the realisation and the instant regret of the situation.

Another language device I have found is the use of a metaphor for the marriage proposal with the scissors. This is very strange because the poem says ‘as you slipped your thumb and middle finger in’. I think this is peculiar because the thumb and middle finger are the common fingers to use scissors as a utensil but in this case (from the speakers point of view) it was a marriage proposal. Another abnormal aspect of this ‘marriage proposal’ is that the speaker is 13 years old at this incident.

‘I simply want to tell you that there are some men in this world who were born to do our unpleasant jobs’

I think that Harper Lee uses language and tone to present Miss Maudie’s views of Maycomb County.

In the quotation, there is a noun phrase (‘some men’) which is used to hint at Atticus’ character. By emphasising on ‘some’, it shows that Miss Maudie believes that there are very few people of the County who are willing to stand up for the rest of the County when they’re needed. This could go two ways. Either she believes that the people of Maycomb County are too cowardly to stand for the County or that they do not have the same views as the people who are standing for the County.