In this passage, William Apess uses the literary device of a rhetorical question to convict his audience of their utter disregard for “pure principles” (2). Bold language, specifically the use of the personal pronoun “you”, identifies Apess’ audience as New England’s white population. As a result of their unethical and ignorant actions, Apess artfully probes their hearts using a sequence of escalating rhetorical questions. The question “Now if they who teach are not essentially affected with pure love, the love of God, how can they teach as they ought?” reveals Apess’ core emotional and logical appeal (3). By criticizing something so dear to his audience, such as their ability to interpret and teach scripture, he aims to make known their “unrighteous,
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Show MoreOn July 8th 1741, Jonathan Edwards preached the sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” in Enfield, Connecticut. Edwards states to his listeners that God does not lack in power, and that people have yet not fallen to destruction because his mercy. God is so forgiving that he gives his people an opportunity to repent and change their ways before it was too late. Edwards urges that the possibility of damnation is immanent. Also that it urgently requires the considerations of the sinner before time runs out. He does not only preach about the ways that make God so omnipotent, but the ways that he is more superior to us. In his sermon, Edwards uses strong, powerful, and influential words to clearly point out his message that we must amend our ways or else destruction invincible. Edwards appeals to the spectators though the various usages of rhetorical devices. This includes diction, imagery, language/tone and syntax. Through the use of these rhetoric devices, Edwards‘s purpose is to remind the speculators that life is given by God and so they must live according to him. This include...
Photographs capture the essence of a moment because the truth shown in an image cannot be questioned. In her novel, The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold uses the language of rhetoric to liberate Abigail from the façade of being a mother and spouse in a picture taken by her daughter, Susie. On the morning of her eleventh birthday, Susie, awake before the rest of the family, discovers her unwrapped birthday present, an instamatic camera, and finds her mother alone in the backyard. The significance of this scene is that it starts the author’s challenge of the false utopia of suburbia in the novel, particularly, the role of women in it.
He was a man whose very words struck fear into the hearts of his listeners. Acknowledged as one of the most powerful religious speakers of the era, he spearheaded the Great Awakening. “This was a time when the intense fervor of the first Puritans had subsided somewhat” (Heyrmen 1) due to a resurgence of religious zeal (Stein 1) in colonists through faith rather than predestination. Jonathan Edwards however sought to arouse the religious intensity of the colonists (Edwards 1) through his preaching. But how and why was Edwards so successful? What influenced him? How did he use diction and symbolism to persuade his listener, and what was the reaction to his teachings? In order to understand these questions one must look at his life and works to understand how he was successful. In his most influential sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, Jonathan Edwards’ persuasive language awakened the religious fervor that lay dormant in colonial Americans and made him the most famous puritan minister of the Great Awakening in North America.
He creates irony within their practice by speculating that Jesus Christ was of a darker complexion. He argues men cannot label themselves Christian, and continue to dehumanize Native Americans; which ultimately contradicts Christian ethics. This sermon engages the reader to sympathize for Native Americans and acts as sort of a “message” to the white men. It points out the hypocrisy in the Christian faith during the 1830’s. Apess successfully supports his claims by adding references to the bible and his vast knowledge in religion. In conclusion, Apess makes coherent arguments that showcase the hypocrisy in Christianity between the white
At the time of Edwards’ sermon, the height of the great awakening to Christianity had peaked (Farley ). Considering this period and his audience, Edwards use of the Bible as evidence for his arguments is practical. His cla...
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The next rhetorical device used is imagery, through imagery in All the King’s Men, Warren outlines how the ramifications of actions will inevitably come back to haunt the person who takes action.The first example of imagery Warren uses is, “For the truth is a terrible thing. You dabble your foot in it and it is nothing. But you walk a little farther and you feel it pull you like an undertow or a whirlpool. First there is the slow pull so steady and gradual you scarcely notice it, then the acceleration, then the dizzy whirl and plunge to blackness. For there is a blackness of truth, too”(Warren 445). In this excerpt, Jack feels stressed because he has come to understand the real impact his actions have had on others. Truth is a terrible thing
During a commencement ceremony, David Foster Wallace addresses graduating students with a query of how to think critically, away from their default parameters of thought. The challenge laid by Wallace was to begin learning how to break away from an egocentric method of thought--away from being able to narrowly look at a situation and observe how it may have a personal effect, in preference for a train of thought that looks at “why is this happening and how does it affect everyone involved”? This is supported by multiple analogies that Wallace covers, such as trying to comprehend why someone is driving defensively in an SUV, or why someone is driving recklessly and in a hurry. Wallace goes as far as to reverse the egocentric train of thought
Edward O. Wilson, the writer of this satire, writes about the opinions of two disagreeing sides to demonstrate the unproductive nature of these litigations. To do this, the author writes in a horatian manner and uses instances of exaggeration, parody, incongruity, and irony to help him convey his message that these arguments are pointless. The well distributed use of these strategies allows the writer to efficiently illustrate and mock the unproductive disagreement of these two groups of people.
Since the dawning of civilizations, man has always experienced conflict with no actions to avoid it. For example, many conflicts are just based on a disagreement between two different groups of people, and those conflicts are blown way out of proportion. In fact, the opinions on environmentalism fall into the same category of conflict. Most of the time, there are two groups who have opposing opinions on environmentalism. These group’s opinions of each other has created a major ordeal, and they cannot seem to achieve anything productive. Instead, they steadily receive disagreement from each other. The author of The Future of Life, Edward O. Wilson, satirized the language of both the people-first critics and the environmentalists. Edward O. Wilson
One of Apess' tools was the pen, which he used to write a short essay titled, "An Indians Looking Glass for the White Man" (Calloway, 2012). Apess' essay showed that claiming Christianity and yet showing bias and distinguishing between races is not biblical. Apess was a Methodist preacher and spoke on Christian principles with a level of expertise. His essay starts as a greeting to his fellow men as well as God in which he refers to as "the maker and preserver both of the white man and the Indian [...] w...
The speaker starts of by describing his cheerful and joyous years of when he was a child. The way the speaker describes his childhood on “Fern Hill” is as if he was living within an eternal holy Garden of Eden. It seems as if the speaker lived throughout his childhood feeling as if “time” allowed him to “play and be”, as if he was young and innocent for and eternity. Additionally, the continuous cycle of beautiful nature portrayed the speaker's idea of his never ending childhood. However, the tone of the speaker appears to shift significantly from cheerful reminiscence to regretfulness. It is as if the speaker believes that the time he spent in his ‘eternal’ childhood has betrayed him. The speaker now moves from assuming that the sun is “born
1) The device Orwell uses to introduce his thesis are chiasmi. The first chiasmus is “A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks” and the second chiasmus is “It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” Both sentences are examples of chiasmus since they reverse key terms in their clauses, the key terms being “drinking” and “failure” in the first, and the state of the language and “foolish thoughts” in the second sentence.
The following essay being summarized and analyzed, “The Inheritance of Tools” by Scott Russell Sanders was originally published in The North American Review in 1986 and later selected by Gay Talese for The Best American Essays in 1987. This essay chronicles the story of the author learning about his father’s death in which he is quickly reminded of the tools and techniques he learned from his father which was passed down through multiple generations. I will discuss the themes portrayed by the author as well as the organization and connections between ideas, and transitions within the text.
In The Tale of Sir Thopas, Geoffrey Chaucer personifies and idealizes the wonder of Nature, allowing her innate sense of mystery to shine through, much like the sun seeping into a meadow discovered. Chaucer’s therapeutic landscape allows the young hero to find an inner sense of well being, manifesting clearly his desires for the first time. Ergo, Nature grants Thopas access to a secret part of himself, and in turn, the knight consciously desires to love Nature. This desire comes to fruition as he sets his sights on the Elf-Queen, a fairy Goddess who personifies the natural world around him. By placing Nature in this deity-like state above Man, Chaucer cleverly uses the pastoral tones of the story to celebrate the continuity of the natural