Frustration is what lurks in my heart. I can’t sleep. With almost 54,000 students studying their guts out for their HSC, lets face it; our chance of a decent atar is bloody dismal. So why should we follow such a demonic system, that old hags from the board of studies have set for us? Why? Well it’s all because they have power. Power over spee ch, power over relationships and the power over truth. And, yes sadly they exploited their power to implant a bizarre truth that education is crucial and socialising are for Derek’s.
Now this same manipulation of power to construct subjective truth is evident through Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Lee Daniel’s The Butler. Both texts manipulate language, perspective and textual form to shape conflicting perspectives over personalities, events and situations. But most importantly towards the audience victims like us, their distortion of truth only diversifies and provokes our insights.
Within Julius Caesar, Cassius exploits the power over relationships and speech to disguise Caesar’s personality with a tyrannical nature, in attempt to diversify and provoke the responder’s insight. This depiction is present through his duologue with Brutus ‘As serpent’s egg/Which hatch’d would as his kind grow mischievous’… which is shortly followed by ‘kill him in the shell’. Now, Cassius the schemer utilise anamorphism and truncated syntax to draw relationships between Caesar and a ruthless and vicious creature. I know Cassius isn’t a very nice person is he. But his attempt to create conflicting perspective in order for provocative insights on Caesar’s personality doesn’t end there.
Take Casca for an example, Cassius again manipulates his power over speech in Act one Scene three to provoke Casca in viewing Caesar as a Tyrant. First Cassius manipulates hyperbola to state Caesar’s enormity as a threat, ‘‘Most like this dreadful night, that thunders, lightens, open graves, and roars as doth