Analysis Of The Lady's Not For Burning

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Set around the 1400s, The Lady’s Not for Burning by Christopher Fry is a play that explores the ideas of life and its meaning. For instance, in Act 1, Thomas Mendip presents a speech in which the expressive purpose is to expose life for its worthlessness and hopelessness through the use of scaling and extreme diction in order to convince his audience to hang him before Doomsday. Before Thomas’s speech begins, his audience does not believe what he is saying and regards Thomas as a fool. In an effort grab his audience’s attention, Thomas establishes a serious tone through his first sentence by utilizing commanding diction. For example, the first word of his speech is “Consider.” By using a command verb as the first word of his speech, …show more content…

Because a mouse is used to depict mankind, mankind is characterized as rather small and insignificant to contrast vastly with the enormous force of time. Essentially, this technique of scaling used by Thomas becomes the very core of his argument in that he continues to identify the immense difference mankind and the world has. Moreover, by explaining how the “spheres churned on hoping to charm our ears with sufficient organ-music” the spheres are represented as a part of the universe’s endeavor to rectify the unimportant status of humans as represented by “the mouse.” However, the intended message was “sadly sent out on the wrong wave of sound.” By explaining how the message was sent on the wrong wavelength, Thomas is able to display that the message never reached man, ultimately causing the spheres to fail. Despite this, the music still “roll fabulous and fine, a roundabout of doomed and golden notes.” Overall, the message of the spheres is golden but it is ultimately doomed for failure. Thus, Thomas is able to build his argument of life’s worthlessness and hopelessness by depicting its creation as a failure due to the fact that it never received the elevation the spheres intended to give it. Furthermore,

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