The Responsibility Lies in Ourselves

HIGH school students of my generation were introduced to Shakespeare's tragedies through a reading of Julius Caesar. It has its share of famous lines. We all had a lot of fun, for example, pointing an accusing finger at an underweight classmate and proclaiming, "Yon Cassius hath a lean and hungry look." But this remark about Cassius did not intrigue me nearly so much as a remark made by him: "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings." Of course, with this exhortation Cassius is attempting to move Brutus to get rid of Caesar, but his words have a personal meaning for me that have nothing to do with Caesar's untimely end on the Ides of March.