Patrick Henry: Fallacy Essay

In the Patrick Henry’s speech at the Virginia Convention Patrick Henry tries to persuade the colonist to fight a war against the English, he does this through several main rhetorical strategies, imagery, emotional appeal, and allusion. Patrick Henry uses imagery to get the listeners attention, as he relates the to the dumb sailors who would get killed by the sirons cause they would be caught in their beauty and singing. Patrick Henry uses emotional appeal to get the listeners on his side, by bringing up slavery because if they do not fight back they can become slaves. Patrick henry uses allusion so he can get the listeners to fight back, he butters them up and gives them a couple reasons on why they should not fight back but then hit them with the news saying that they have to fight back. Patrick Henrys speech was good because he used Imagery, Emotional appeal, and allusion and that really grabbed the listeners attention and made them go to war.

Henry also used many metaphors to give a clear picture to the audience in order to dramatize the current conflict. Toward the beginning of the body of his speech, he called Britain sending troops in response the colonists’ rebellious activities as “war-like preparations” and said they “cover[ed] our waters and darken[ed] our land.” There he compared Britain sending troops to a “cover” or a shadow, making them seem like a heavy burden or threat. This comparison painted them in an ominous and untrustworthy light without Henry directly declaring that the British soldiers were untrustworthy. Later in the speech, Henry compared submission to the to slavery, saying, “It is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission in slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may

Modern historians often claim that Patrick Henry tended toward demagoguery and propaganda in his 1775 Speech to the Second Virginia Convention. I agree with these modern historians on the basis of Henry’s constant use of emotional appeals (pathos) and rhetorical devices such as parallel syntax, allusions, and irony to name a few. While he did have ethical (ethos) and logical (logos) appeals, the majority of Henry’s word choice and sentence structure showed that his speech was made up of emotional appeals that included both demagoguery and propaganda.

Throughout the entire speech, he creates emotion that affects the audience. He created emotion throughout the speech by using other rhetorical strategies, such as repetition, imagery, rhetorical questions, and allusions. By using repetition, he made the audience feel some guilt. In the repetition “Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves” creates the guilt-feeling towards the audience, because if Henry were right about Great Britain, then the audience would be in fault for not going to war with Great Britain. By using imagery, the images of an “insidious smile”, “delusive phantoms of hope”, and slavery and chains, creates an unpleasant image to the mind making the audience feel angry, empty, and fearful. Henry uses many rhetorical questions. The use of the rhetorical questions is a question that can only be answered with one right answer. This is because the question being asked is the truth. Sometimes the truth can be hard to hear and accept. As Henry asks these questions, “But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction?” he evokes fear towards the audience and perhaps anger. He also uses biblical allusions in the speech. He does this to create some credibility but also to provoke some trust from the audience. When Henry mentions God or the biblical allusion it comforted or delighted the audience to know that God is a role in his speech. Although Henry uses repetition, imagery, rhetorical questions, and allusions, he incorporated emotion to those three other rhetorical strategies used.

The fight for American independence was a long, arduous struggle, but many great literary works aided the battle. One such example is Patrick Henry’s “Speech in the Virginia Convention”. Given in 1775 at the Virginia Provincial Convention, Henry aims to convince listeners of the futility of peace with Britain, and that they should join the efforts for the inevitable war. To accomplish this, Henry uses many different persuasive techniques and rhetorical devices. In Patrick Henry’s “Speech”, Henry uses techniques such as rhetorical questions, allusion, and emotional appeal to convey the point that the United States must rebel against Britain.

Immediately as the speech begins, Henry’s tone manifests itself and remains unwavering. Henry begins, “It is natural for a man to indulge in the illustration of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth” (1). This sheds insight on his message and portrays him as a well versed individual. He then strengthens his tone when he says

Patrick Henry was born in virginia in 1736. He was a lawyer and a politician who encouraged the separation from great britain, by delivering the “Speech to the virginia convention” on March 23 1775, 3 week before the actual war. He was a powerful speaker whose words helped sweep the colonist towards their Declaration of Independence. Rhetorical devices and rhetorical appeals are ways that the writer draws you into the reading. By using ethos pathos and logos, the author finds ways to entregue everyone in different ways.

First, Patrick Henry, author of “Speech in the Virginia Convention”, uses allusions and rhetorical questions to convince his

While attempting to change the minds of members of the Virginia House of Burgesses, to whom he is speaking, Patrick Henry of various unsuccessful ways of protesting the oppressive British rule. Henry reveals coherently what he feels the next steps should be in regards to the British. Henry dexterously uses his diction to make his stance more convincing and more

Although his method differs a little from Edwards’, it still has the same effect on his audience. Henry mentions “truth”, “God”, and “responsibility” together to the Virginia Convention, a room full of mostly religious men. Henry tells the convention that it is their responsibility to fulfill their duty to God (go to war with Britain), and he knows that many of the men will likely consider this argument, since they are religious. His other rhetorical device used is an allusion to the ‘sirens’, from the Odyssey of Homer. Patrick Henry does this to compare the British Army to a siren, who lures men to her island and then turns them into pigs.

In the Speech to the Virginia Convention by Patrick Henry, the author uses multiple literary devices and a unifying tone to support his claim for the Americans to go against British oppression and to

Patrick Henry utilizes rhetorical devices throughout his “Speech in the Virginia Convention” to advocate the fact that the thirteen colonies must approach Britain with violence in order to secede successfully from Britain’s absolute power over Americas independency.

A representation of when Henry utilizes imagery to help convince the Loyalists was when he expressed, “Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot…” (“Speech to the Virginia Convention”). This use of imagery gives the mental visual of slave-like beings being held captive like criminals amongst the floor. He exercises this use of imagery in order to add hyperbolism to his diction and allow the representatives to visualize what could happen to them if they don’t retaliate fast enough. Another illustration of how Henry demonstrates imagery in his speech was when he stated, “They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry has been so long forging” (“Speech to the Virginia Convention”). In this use of imagery, Henry pursues to verbalize how the British have already started taking action in their long-lasting pursuit to seize America. He utilizes imagery in order to depict a vivid image in the minds’ of his audience and to give supporting evidence to his main points. Nevertheless, Henry not only used imagery to help persuade his audience, but also

Patrick Henry uses logical appeal to make clear to the colonists that the war was imminent and a decision was to be made. At this time in history, there was a growing unrest in the British colonies due to the injustices of the British government, such as the heavy and unjustifiable taxes for example, to which some colonists were turning a blind eye. Because he could sense the danger in the situation, Henry knew that war was the only option to solve their oppression from England. To get the colonists to realize the urgency in their situation, he gave examples of how the British did not have the colonists’ interest at heart and how a British attack was on the horizon. Using the evident appearance of British troops in the colonies’ waters, he