Freedom of thinking, a different way of seeing things can be hard for some. In George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan, the Inquisitor gives a powerful speech, which demonizes Joan and her heresy. The Inquisitor uses his speech to persuade the church of Joan of the arc’s heresy. In his entreaty, he uses many rhetorical strategies such as ethos, pathos, and logos. He even uses similes and analogies to make his case. The Inquisitor keeps an intense and serious tone throughout the speech, while the situation being a grave one. He makes the plea a dying matter as if Joan killed someone. The Inquisitor begins his plea with a grave tone and starting the rhetorical appeal of ethos to legitimize his view of the grave matter. In lines 1-5 he states “If you had seen what I have seen of heresy, you would not think it a light thing even in its most apparently harmless and even lovable and pious origins.”. Validating that he has dealt with heresy in a great matter, the Inquisitor hasn't seen this only once though, he states again in line 16 “I have seen this again and again”. He gives the audience the appeal to ethos, the audience now can believe what he is talking about because of his experience. He has now led the audience to be able to trust him. Now the Inquisitor, in his prestigious position, begins to persuade the audience with the horrors and legit wickedness of heresy. In lines 17-27 he gives a great deal of pathos and some aggressive diction, he expresses “Heresy ... ends
Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his bold novel, The Scarlet Letter tackles a variety of themes that include: sin, guilt, redemption, postfeminism, and organized religion's abuse of power. Hawthorne spoke in a somber and grim tone, designed to arouse a sense of suspense for his readers. The audience in which he was addressing would have been conservative Christians and women suffragettes, all of whom reflected the ideologies during this time period. By instilling clever diction, Hawthorne exposes hypocrisy in Puritanism and objects against the religion's superfluous punishments; which force individuals to endure unnecessary and extreme suffering.
“One Art” is a villanelle filled with sad sentiments of encouragement towards accepting loss. Elizabeth Bishop uses her tone to pull emotions from the reader that could be confusion and disagreement. Her tone deeply impacts the reader in such a way that it causes him/her to seriously think of accepting her opinion and advice. The capturing way she uses her tone in her word choice shows the reader her natural inflexion when she speaks. The tone of her work even affects her characterization. In “One Art,” Elizabeth Bishop uses tone to convey a character of false casualty, while also using it to emphasize the very heavy impact of her diction.
In 1960, American journalist and politician Clare Boothe Luce speaks to journalists at the Women’s National Press Club. She brings up the topic of integrity. Not only does integrity affect journalists, but also the media as a whole. From the beginning, she is straightforward with the audience, she is going to give them hell. She goes on to say that everyone in the audience will be revolted, but should listen through. This prepares the room full of female journalists to feel attacked by her criticisms of the American press. Luce argues that integrity needs to be restored in the media, to do this she appeals to their values while using a defensive tone along with a positive one, while also creating
In 1847 Eliza Stacey writes a letter to her father in law, Edward Stacey, to persuade him to help the family get out of this debt they have unexpectedly fallen into. Through her letter Eliza Stacey uses pathos to display the suffering the debt has brought her and ethos to establish a reason to ask for his help. She also uses personification and anecdotes to make Edward recall the series of events in the past that have led to debt hoping that Edward will feel sympathy and recognize Eliza’s helpless feeling and cry for help.
Rhetorical devices are devices that are used to convey a meaning to the reader and create emotions through different types of language. Elie Wiesel uses rhetorical devices such as personification, metaphors, and rhetorical questions to emphasize and establish the theme of losing faith.
“I am not here to represent Leonidas. His actions speak louder than my words ever could”, although Queen Gorgo believes this to be true, it is evident that her words still make quite the impact. The speech that was chosen for analysis was Queen Gorgo’s request of Sparta’s council to send their forces to the Battle of Thermopylae, from the movie 300. This speech was chosen simply for the fact that I have always enjoyed this movie and that I’ve always admired Queen Gorgo’s character. Although she does not immediately convince the council of sending Sparta’s army, her actions that follow do. Through the use of pathos, metaphors, and an urgent tone, Queen Gorgo is able to make a strong case to the council as to why they should aid King Leonidas at the Battle of Thermopylae.
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, was first published in 1850. It was set in a harsh Puritan community in Massachusetts during the seventeenth century. Hawthorne was of Puritan descent and researched the community. The focus of his novel is based on the adulteress act of Hester Prynne and how she was treated by her community. The novel is known for it’s abundance of rhetorical and literary devices, and was one of the first novels to effectively use them. Hawthorne uses rhetorical devices to portray his views and thoughts about the community. One device Hawthorne uses is irony. Specifically, dramatic, situational, and verbal irony. Hawthorne's use of irony is employed to show the true characteristics and emotions of the characters,
The Book Night By Elie Wiesel demonstrates the evilness and insanity that is found in every human being, and is depicted through rhetorical devices to make the point more clear. At Elie’s arrival to Auschwitz ( a concentration camp) he watches people being burned, telling the reader that, “never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of children whose bodies were transformed into smoke under the silent sky. “ (pg 34) In this moment it is hard to believe that human beings are capable of doing such a thing, ruthlessly murdering thousands of people all at once, without blinking an eye.
In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the rhetorical device that makes the most impact on the reader is Pathos because he shows us what he was feeling and that eventually takes a toll on you. First of all when Elie’s father figured out that he was dying, he wanted his son to feel for him and so he said, ““You, atleast, have pity on me….” Have pity on him! I his only son….”(Wiesel 110). This quote is revealing how Elie truly feels about his father because he has caused him so much pain throughout the years and so, Elie isn’t to upset about his father condition since he knows he is going to die soon and it will help him stay alive longer.
A large part of what makes the Inquisitor’s monologue so off-putting is his commanding tone and a strong appeal to ethos. The Inquisitor’s diction is dark, violent, and unforgiving towards heresy, and he takes every
Willa Cather has a great understanding of diction and thoroughly displays it in My Antonia. Anton Jelinek, a newly arrived immigrant from Bohemia, still calls Italians, “Eytalian … kawn-tree … we was showed in” (69) and mispronounces country and does not yet understand English grammar. He comments that, “I make my first communion very young,” (71). Jelinek’s informal dialogue fits his character because he is an immigrant and has just barely started to learn English. Therefore, his bad grammar, his accent, and mispronunciations make sense for who he is and where he came from, especially when taken into account where he is in his life. In contrast, Jim, who grew up in America and is native to the land, has a highly developed vocabulary and comments on how things are, “taciturn … [or] queer,” (72) and notes that Krajiek, “shrunk along behind them,” (75). He describes the, “bluish air, full of fine eddying snow, like long veils flying,” (76) and uses the words, “propitiatory intent” (77). Jim has a more formal language and is more educated that the immigrants of the towns. It is logical because it is written from the view of Jim as an adult looking back. As he looks back, he finds more complete words to describe situations that when he was actually in them. Jim’s vocabulary enlarged over time, so changes in how he describes his memories or reasonable.
Queen Elizabeth I is considered to be one of the most powerful women in history. In 1588, as ruler of England, she was faced with an invasion against Spain for control over trade in the new world. Her “Against the Spanish Armada” speech was addressed to the English Army at Tilbury Fort to help motivate and boost assurance, as well as showing support to her troops over the battle they were about to face. With her passionate words and courageous way, Queen Elizabeth establishes a connection with her soldiers; appealing to their patriotism and emotions through logos, pathos, and ethos. Although she was uncertain of a “famous victory”, Elizabeth instills the reassurance they need to fight against Spain and leading them to victory in the end.
Stephanie Coontz started off her article about the 50th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s international best seller, “The Feminine Mystique”, which was written about the women’s movement of the 1960s. What Coontz is trying to explain is that gender equality is not stalled, but “It has hit a wall”. Her title is the opposite of what she is trying to write about in the article. At first she talked about women’s rights back when the book was written. Instead of blaming the beliefs of gender roles from individuals, she points the finger at the economy and the work-family policies as the major problems to gender equality. She explains the gender equality stalled during 1990s and the first few years of the 2000s. She brought into text the usual statics, “the percentage of Americans preferring the male breadwinner/female homemaker family model actually rose to 40 percent from 34 percent. Between 1997 and 2007, the number of full-time working mothers who said they would prefer to work part time increased to 60 percent from 48 percent. In 1997, a quarter of stay-at-home mothers said full-time work would be ideal. By 2007, only 16 percent of stay-at-home mothers wanted to work full time.”(Coontz) She also talked about how 70 percent of men and women want an egalitarian relationship and how the demand of work has intensified.
“You don’ know what you’re a-doin’,” were Casy’s last words before he died as a martyr. Casy died for his cause, his belief that the elite were not truly aware of how their greed was causing the suffering of the weak and that the weak could only surpass their sorrows if they worked together. Steinbeck uses chapter 25 of Grapes of Wrath to portray this very message. Steinbeck uses an array of rhetorical devices such as symbolism and the use of a instructive tone which gives the reader a sense of being sermonized to portray the greed of the elite and how that fuels the wrath of the weak, while also empowering the weak to join together and warning the elite of the inevitable consequences of
Ad Hominem: Latin for “against the man,” and refers to the logical fallacy (error) of arguing that someone is incorrect because they are unattractive, immoral, weird, or any other bad thing you could say about them as a person. (https://literaryterms.net/ad-hominem/)