More Mistakes of Brutus

Further Mistakes of Brutus

Bill Long

Purity and Murder in 3.1

In my essay on Magical Thinking I tried to show that Brutus's attempt to redefine the murder of Caesar as a sacrifice, a "dish fit for the gods (2.1.173)," was an example of unrealistic thinking that was ultimately rooted in Brutus's lack of self-knowledge. Here I argue that once the murder is defined in sacrificial terms, it becomes understood as an occasion of religious purity and thus primarily an act of the heart and not of the hands. This redefinition itself leads to the further problem of devaluing the physical nature and result of the act--the mangled body of Caesar--which Brutus then unwisely gives over to the care of Antony. Once the essence of your act is spiritualized, the physical elements constituting the act become unimportant.

An Action of Purity

Even though Brutus has defined the murder of Caesar as a sacrifice and has also explained the conspirators' enterprise as a whole as something pure because it was not "stained" with an oath (2.1.132), one still has to deal with the body of Caesar lying there, lifeless, running blood. What does Brutus require the conspirators to do?

"Stoop, Romans, stoop./ And let us bathe our hands in Caesar's blood/ Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords;/ Then walk we forth, even to the market-place,/ And waving our red weapons o'er our heads,/ Let's all cry, 'Peace, freedom, and liberty (3.1.105-110)!'"

Caesar's blood is thus portrayed as having formed a pool, maybe even collecting in the half moons at the base of Pompey's statue where devoted pilgrims had worn down the marble. If the act is no more murder, the blood is no more to be feared. It is cleansing, liberating, freeing. The blood of J.C. cleanseth from all sins....

People who murder often have to try to convince themselves that what they intend to do or what they actually did is not, in fact, a murder. In order to do so they have to abstract themselves from the deed itself and baptize it with other language, in this case the language of purity.

In Othello a similar dynamic is at work, though in this case Othello justifies the murder of his wife Desdemona not as an act of religious purity but an act to satisfy justice.

"It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul;/ Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars,. It is the cause (Oth. 5.2.1-3)."

Indeed, Othello wants to remove his act from the religious sphere: "Yet I'll not shed her blood (5.2.3)." For Brutus, however, since his act has been redefined with the help of the language of purity, he will continue to act and have the followers act in that spirit. The blood dripping from their arms now is the blood of liberty and freedom.

Look on the Heart, Brutus Says

Brutus knows that the act looks terribly evil and so he says to Antony when he comes to meet Brutus, "Though now we must appear bloody and cruel,/ As by our hands and this our present act/ You see we do, yet see you but our hands,.....Our hearts you see not, they are pitiful (3.1.165-169)." That is, the burden on those who are pure is to try to convince others, who might be a bit more practically minded than the spiritual ones, that what they see is not actually what is before them. Or, to put it differently, an evangelical religious purist must try to convince others that appearances are deceiving. So Brutus says, 'If you only could read our hearts, Antony, you would be utterly convinced of the truth, purity and rightness of our actions.'

This approach is fraught with many problems, not the least of which is the need to devalue the physical in order to maintain the clarity of the spiritual. And this is precisely what Brutus does, to his ultimate loss. Since Brutus has now reduced the killing of Caesar to an idea, the physical casing or "husk" of the idea (Caesar's body) is unimportant. Thus, Brutus says to Antony, "Prepare the body, then, and follow us (3.1.253)." That this line is addressed to Antony is evident at the end of the scene where Antony and Octavian's servant bear off Caesar's body. But, by granting Antony custody of the body, Brutus has given him the most powerful weapon possible: the visible reminder of Caesar's presence. Antony will use Caesar's body, and gown, to his advantage the next day.

The point is worth reemphasizing: lack of self-knowledge (in Brutus's case) leads to all manner of misjudgment, self-deception and unrealistic redefinition of action. The end result of all is that Brutus becomes discredited, his cause lost and civil strife ensues.