Aim: How does Cassius and Brutus’ conflict establish foreshadowing for the dénouement of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar?
At the beginning of the class, we continued to discuss the questions we ended off with yesterday. I thought Antony is the one that has the most power, out of Octavius (heir of Julius Caesar) and Lepidus. Our classmate thought Lepidus is like the third wheel that has the least power and seems like he doesn’t have any true decision-making power. Our classmate stated that when Antony say Lepidus was a “horse” and “ass he was thinking Lepidus should be like a property and do all the hard work like being the “ass” and he wanted Lepidus to be controlled by him so say he is also the “horse”. Secondly, Octavius is younger than Antony so he must have less power in him which results in Antony having the most power out of them. Besides that Antony thought Lepidus' brother should die because he was one of the conspirators and Antony wanted to keep himself clean.
But the class found out the most ironic thing was Antony also wanted Caesar's will and money for himself and wanted to reduce what everyone got in the will. Which made his whole speech very ironic and fake because he was making a speech about Caesar giving so much to the people and he’s going to give all the will to the citizens. From the above students can tell Antony doesn’t seem to be as obedient as we thought in the beginning, but instead, he became two-faced and very ambitious when he had the power. This becomes the most obvious in Julius Caesar—Act IV, scene i lines 32-50 where we considered being the turning point of Antony when he is saying that he doesn’t want Brutus and Cassius to have too much power so he won’t have the chance of ending up like Caesar being killed by the conspirator. In this scene, students notice Antony’s selfishness and know that he wouldn’t be a good emperor like Julius Caesar. After Octavius heard Antony’s response above Octavius doesn’t seem to be on the bad side where Antony is and this is symbolic because he still listens and follows what Antony said. A classmate concluded from this that Octavius isn’t as power-hungry as Antony, but Antony is extremely ambitious even though he may seem to be very simple and obedient at the beginning, we saw a different side of him from this conversation. Overall, from Julius Caesar—Act IV, scene i, students discussed the character trait that Antony demonstrates in this scene is much different than what we have thought of before, especially after he had the power that he never had before.
"What is Symbolism?": A Literary Guide for English Teachers and Students - YouTube
This enrichment will show a furthermore detailed explanation of Symbolism in literature.
WHOLE CLASS DISCUSSION:
In this scene we see a different side of Antony. What things does he say that appear out of character with the simple and honest man he appeared to be in the previous act?
My classmate and I both thought it was ironic that Antony told people to go against the conspirator but he is kind of a conspirator himself to his teammate, for example, he agrees that his nephew should die and Lepidus should be used to do hard work. Furthermore, he wanted to reduce what everyone will get from Caesar’s will so that he could have more. From the decision that Antony made he doesn’t appear to be as simple and honest like what he appeared to be in the previous act
Do Now: WHOLE CLASS DISCUSSION
Consider Brutus
Predict the role he will play in the conflict with Antony as we move toward the conclusion of the play.
Do you feel he will emerge a confident leader?
Do you feel he will still be swayed by the opinions of others? Etc…
The class thinks Brutus is gullible and can be swayed again since he was easily swayed by Cassius before. We also thought Brutus could be a confident leader, a classmate can see him as a good leader based on the good conversational skill that he used during his speech and as we know from the beginning Brutus decided to be a conspirator out of his love and care for the people in Rome.
Dénouement: The final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.
The class determined that the act and scene that we are focusing on now was towards the Dénouement of the play, the scene that will lead to the final solution. Below is a link for more detailed information on Dénouement.
We later started to read Julius Caesar—Act IV, scene ii
15 JC: IV, ii & iii [Pt 1] - Google Docs
05 - Act 4 Scene 2.mp3 - Google Drive
The class didn’t finish the questions for Julius Caesar–Act IV, scene ii yet but the questions will be done and further discussed tomorrow in class.
Reflection:
In today’s lesson, I learned Dénouement was a series of events that would happen before the final resolution of a play. Now we are on Dénouement going to the end, I know this because the climax is when Julius Caesar was assassinated and the event that is happening now is after the assassination. From today’s lesson, I also learned and found out that Antony isn’t as simple as we have thought of before. After he has real power in his hand he becomes ambitious and two-faced, before, he shows full obedience to Caesar but now he’s trying to disobey him and reduce what everyone will get from Caesar’s will and to take some of it for himself. I believe we learned Dénouement so in the future, we can determine it and use it to understand the context of the literature more. We saw this in Julius Caesar’s play and I believe it will appear more often in the future. The discussion that we made today would let me have a better understanding of the play. I can use the information we learned today when I’m reading literature and will be able to know which part of the literature I’m on so I can have a better connection of it to the entire plot. In the future, I can also use what I learned today to create a better plot diagram. In conclusion, I learned Dénouement and we are reading the Dénouement of Julius Caesar play now and in this part of the play, the unknown side of selfish Antony was revealed to the reader.
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