Rhetorical Devices Used To Characterize The Dragon

The decisions we make impact our future like the people from the past. Therefore, we ultimately decide our future. Drawing from the past, our predecessors have created the present. Continuing this cycle, we are now the ones creating the future. Ever since the past, people have made their own choices that had led to their fate. Likewise, we experience similar situations where make decisions to produce an outcome. Through the dragon symbol and an appeal to a medieval audience, my short sermon illustrates the implications of free will and serves as an allegorical lesson for modern readers.

In my RIP project, the dragon symbolizes an evil force. In order to characterize the dragon, rhetorical devices deliver its persona and aura. In the phrase

During the fifteenth century, manorial power has waned as time progressed, empowering the peasants to establish their own short-scale system of social justice (Fifteenth-century attitudes). The dominance of villages granted peasants control of communal affairs. At the same time, challenges on faith and religion have occurred (“Church in the Middle Ages”). Driven by rebellions and unfaithfulness, the short sermon warns dissenters of of possible tragedies and also comforts the obedient. Using a passionate, cautionary, and serious tone, the narrator informs about the dragon’s wrath and how to be saved. In the RIP, the conflict between human versus unnatural creature intensify if peasants fail to make the right decision. Moreover, the purpose of the short sermon is to warn medieval peasants of the future. Due to lack of literacy and paper prints in medieval Europe, the short sermon is delivered orally and structured in medieval language. As stated in the journal article “Medieval Allegory,”

In the text, the targeted audience are medieval peasants because the setting mentions about a feudalist society. To warn them about the consequences of the choices we make, my RIP project exposes that free will enables us to make life-changing choices. This idea is reflected in “Free Will and Determination,” as it illustrates that “in God's mind everything is determined in advance,” and that “the active believer is wholly ignorant of this determination and therefore enjoys fully the freedom to choose” (9) to imply that the vast freedom of humanity has its own implications that change the future. Since medieval peasants have free will, they are offered a choice whether to listen to the sermon’s warning or not. After alerting the peasants, the faithful ones receive guidance and solidarity. As this online encyclopedia also argues that “[even] the existence of evil in face of the omnipotence of God is justified in terms of the supremacy of humankind's essential freedom to adopt its own goals and to choose its own course of action,” (10) in which proves that non-believers are willing to challenge their own fate and destiny despite what the prophecy