Betrayal in Julius Ceasar Essay

When a person is betrayed by someone he or she loves, something profound happens in the heart of the betrayed person. It is not simply that someone has “let you down,” or “double-crossed you. ” Rather, the betrayer has done an action or taken special information and used it to harm you. The betrayer has held a position of confidence of your most sacred secrets, and then they treat those secrets as if they are to be exploited. A betrayer is a person who knows your heart and has ripped into that heart and ripped out that heart by exposing and exploiting your vulnerabilities.

Betraying another person has become okay in modern day society due to the fact that we feel that we need to preserve ourselves, we have to defend our personal relationships with others, and we must always serve the greater good. In today’s society, people are focused on self-preservation when it comes to the betrayal of others. If a person feels that his life, his ego, or his friendships will be jeopardized by another person, he is most likely not afraid to betray another person.

This is much like jealousy.

We as people feel that we are never good enough. We want to be better than the person next to us, but when that doesn’t happen we feel that person needs to be expelled. In the novel Julius Caesar this is exactly what Brutus does to Caesar. He was afraid that Caesar would outshine the Triumvirate. Brutus killed him, thinking that maybe it would make him look better. This never worked out Brutus. Instead, everyone hated him. His self-preservation was the reverse psychology of what we as people think that betrayal will do for us.

Another way that our society views betrayal is with our personal relationships with others. This can be summed up in one word: trust. Humans use trust as a comfort factor. We are always seeking the opportunity to ensue trust in the people in our lives. Betrayal is always ready to mess this up. If we feel that we cannot trust someone we betray them. This is what Caesar’s friends did to him. No one wanted to believe that they could trust him. So what did they do? They betrayed him.

The last factor in betraying another person is for the greater good. Brutus believed that by killing Caesar that he was serving the people. He thought that is what they wanted. Just because he was afraid of Caesar he believed that everyone thought the same. The thought was that he would become king and that was very frightening to Brutus. Service to the greater good is a factor of betrayal that is used by many people. We do it because we think that we are able to protect others.

Many times this form of betrayal does not do any good because it is done for the wrong reasons. Betraying another person has become okay in modern day society due to the fact that we feel that we need to preserve ourselves, we have to defend our personal relationships with others, and we must always serve the greater good. When a person is betrayed by someone he or she loves, something profound happens in the heart of the betrayed person. It is not simply that someone has “let you down,” or “double-crossed you. Rather, the betrayer has done an action or taken special information and used it to harm you. The betrayer has held a position of confidence of your most sacred secrets, and then they treat those secrets as if they are to be exploited. A betrayer is a person who knows your heart and has ripped into that heart and ripped out that heart by exposing and exploiting your vulnerabilities. Betrayal is found in many different forms of literature, especially the novel Julius Caesar.