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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
May 2015
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Thomas Paine was a very influential and persuasive writer in his time. He uses specific elements of rhetoric to guide and persuade his audience. The document, “Common Sense” was no other than what Paine believed what common sense was, but how the people of America had become so oblivious to what they were getting themselves into. This involved the reconciliation between England and the colonies, but Paine disagreed with the reconciliation and called the American people to refuse and revolt against it. He used several elements of rhetoric to explain, persuade, and prove why the American people should not reconcile with the British. In the first sentence of his argument he says, “I have nothing more to offer than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense. He lists these in an orderly fashion and they all agree with each other in terms of speaking the truth at an easy and understandable level. Paine shifts to a serious note when talking about the relationship between the American colonies and the British. “The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pen on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.” This quote by Paine has several rhetoric devices including pathos, similes, and metaphors. He uses these specific words and rhetoric language to explain to the American people that they need to depart from their British mother country and succeed as a nation of its own, claiming that Britain will only drag the nation down, not in the direction they should go. “To the commencement of hostilities, are like the almanacs of last year, which though proper then, are superseded and useless now. This simile use relates to his suggestion that the old principles of the thirteen colonies, formally known as British rule need to be abolished and are useless to the succession of the nation’s future. He then addresses claims of American succession with the help of Britain, but quickly argues the claim with specific fact. He uses metaphors throughout this piece of text to provide rhetoric to the audience. “We may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty.” Paine does an excellent job driving to his message that the best of America is without the reconciliation with Great Britain. He compares the thirteen colonies to a child, which to an outsider would not be seen as a proper comparison and he claims, like the child needs meat, America needs its version of the “meat”, as well. This would be an excellent use of rhetoric towards the common man to help them understand his concerns with the use of an understandable comparison. At last, Paine does a great job at backing all of his claims with data and warrant. He can be seen using outside information such as the Seven Year’s War, stating that we should be companions with all European countries, yet the British involvement in the war has destroyed such ability to reconcile with France or Spain. He claims that their countries and their involvement in trade and economics would greatly benefit the thirteen colonies, yet the British control has ruined even such an ability to think that. In closing, Paine is a master at rhetoric devices in order to get his opinions and vie points across to a group of people, and also at persuading such people to gather and revolt against what he believes and proves as, common sense.
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
May 2015
Categories |