Omens, Superstition and Fate in 'Julius Caesar'

Although there were numerous roles that showed throughout the play but the ones that we saw repetitive were Omens,Superstition, and fate. We saw all of these things appear when things were leading up to Caesar’s death and after. And without these things being key factors i don’t think we would have the same type of anxiety on what’s going to happen next. The first topic I want to attack is Omens and its impact on the play.

William Shakespeare’s ‘The Tragedy of Julius Caesar,’ omens are unusual occurrences used to symbolize impending events. They provide foreshadowing for upcoming plot developments such as Caesar’s death or the conspirator’s defeat in battle. However, not all unusual events may be known as omens some may see them as natural occurrences or coincidences. As Cicero States in the play, ‘But men may construe things after a fashion, Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.’ Meaning, sometimes people might read too much into ordinary things and create a meaning for them which is separate from what they actually are. The lion Casca sees walking through the streets of Rome could have simply escaped from a cage; however the lion could also be Julius Caesar himself. A major example of omens in the play was the Soothsayer Because Twice in the play, Caesar comes across a soothsayer, The soothsayer tells Caesar numerous times to, ‘Beware the Ides of March.’ The soothsayer repeats the phrase seven times over the course of both encounters. Caesar disregards the warning every time. ‘He is a dreamer,’ Caesar says, ‘Let us leave him.’ We don’t know much about this soothsayer, although he does appear in Caesar’s life In reality, he may have been someone who suspected what the conspirators had planned.

The next key factor in the play was fate. And fate refers to the idea that certain things happen because they are meant to happen. In William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the concept of fate is explored and challenged through the actions and words of the characters. If you believe in fate, you might think that there was nothing Caesar could have done to avoid his death. If you do not believe in fate, you might see Caesar’s arrogance as a cause of his death. The main idea of Julius Caesar involves a group of conspirators who plan to murder Julius Caesar. Since the play is based on Facts, the audience knows that in the end, Julius Caesar will be killed. This encourages the perspective that it is Julius Caesar’s fate to die, and the real interest comes from looking at the events that lead up to his assassination. But Caesar had several chances to avoid his fate. From the very Start, Caesar notices that a certain man is not to be trusted. Caesar says that ‘Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.’ One of Caesar’s advisers tells him to not worry about Cassius, but as fate would have it Cassius is in the middle of masterminding the plot to kill Caesar. The fact that Caesar had suspicions from the start but still failed to foil the plot suggests that it was Caesar’s fate to die at the hands of the conspirators.

The last role we saw in the play was superstition. In the play Julius Caesar, the author William Shakespeare uses superstition repeatedly to affect the plot as well as the characters. Superstition in the play is used to foreshadow Caesar’s death, impact Brutus’ actions in the battlefield and to emphasize the Roman’s connection to superstition.about his wife. One examples of superstition is when Caesar asks his friend to touch his wife while he is competing in a race. Caesar says ‘Forget not in your speed, Antonius, To touch Calpurnia, for our elders say The barren, touched in this holy chase, Shake off their sterile curse.’ In other words, Caesar believes that Mark Antony can cure Calpurnia’s fertility issues by touching her. The fact that Caesar calls their lack of children a ‘curse’ even further shows that he does not believe there is a logical explanation. He is superstitious. Although there were numerous roles that showed throughout the play but the ones that we saw repetitive were Omens,Superstition, and fate. Without these roles i don’t believe that the play would be the same.

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