What Made Brutus an Honorable Man?
The character Brutus in the play “The Life and Death of Julius Caesar” is an honorable man because he kills Caesar with the belief that he is acting for the greater good. Brutus also has no ill feelings toward Caesar.
Brutus receives a message from a Roman villager the night he is trying to make a decision about whether he should join the conspirators or not. The message states that the general Roman public is afraid of Caesar. The audience knows that the validity of the author of the letter is in question, but Brutus believes it nonetheless. This letter sways Brutus to act on behalf of the desires of the people of Rome and join with the conspirators to kill Caesar.
Brutus is also an honorable man because he takes responsibility for his actions and announces to the crowd that he killed Caesar, but he did so on their behalf. When Brutus dies at the end of the play, Marc Antony, who spoke out against Brutus after Caesar’s death, says that Brutus was the noblest Roman of them all. Furthermore, he was the only conspirator who did not act out of his envy of Caesar, but rather for the “common good to all.”
