Rhetorical Analysis Of Patrick Henry Speech

Patrick Henry’s speech to the Virginia Convention written and spoken by Patrick Henry raised the people 's attention. He spoke passionate words because he no longer wanted to be a slave to Britain.The men that attended the Virginia Convention realized that they needed to start fighting back after all the troubles the British caused. The British terrorized innocent people of America, even killed men, women, and children. In his speech he proposed resolutions to prepare the Virginia Colony for war and gave the speech to support those resolutions. His reasons for the speech were to convince the colonist, to try and maintain peace, to persuade war against Britain, and to show that he would be a good president. Patrick Henry’s speech was very effective regarding the Virginia Convention using ethos, pathos, and logos.

At a tense meeting in a church in Richmond, Virginia, away from the watchful eyes of Britain, Patrick Henry began to deliver a rousing speech to the Second Convention of Delegates. His passion was tangible to the audience as he called the delegates to action. His speech was memorable to everyone in the room and powerful in convincing the delegates to support the war. Little did he know that this speech would continue to be known for its power and persuasion for generations to come. Throughout Patrick Henry's speech, he emphasized the necessity to act against Britain and support the war, but he did so in a way that was unavoidably persuasive. Henry used emotional appeal, metaphors, and rhetorical questions in order to convince the delegates

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.

The Aristotelian appeal of pathos is one that Henry also successfully utilizes throughout his speech. This appeal makes the audience feel emotions about the piece which aids in persuasion. Henry voices in his speech, “We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts.” Pathos is displayed in this quote

Paragraph 1 - the tone of the speech was confident, persuasive, passionate, and urgent. The purpose of the speech was to the Virginia Convention. Some examples of antithesis is “give me liberty or give me death” (Henry p6) - parallel of liberty and death emphasizes difference and the other one is “there is no retreat but in submission and slavery.” Henry appeal the audience with Emotional appeals (pathos). Henry makes an appeal to ethos by making God seem more important than the earthly kings, as character and authority prevail over just authority. Although Patrick Henry emphasizes that he is patriotic towards Britain, he has a different view on how to handle the conflict with them. He does not immediately discredit the views of the audience but attempts to show them a different viewpoint. He references the Bible saying, "Different men often see the same subject in different lights." He uses the word "light" to show his view is aligned with God's purpose. “An act of disloyalty towards the majesty of heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings” Henry juxtaposes God with the earthly kings. The diction that he uses shows the authority of God over a king (King George III). The word majesty is related with splendor and quality of God. Paragraph 2 - Henry begins the second paragraph of his speech discussing the illusion of hope. Henry is trying to accomplish by saying “It is natural to man to indulge in the

On March 23rd, 1775, Patrick Henry delivered his Speech to the Virginia Convention. This speech becomes one of the most famous speeches in American Oratory. His audience were white men, that owned slaves and land, were wealthy, and men that received advanced education, compared to most men at that time. Considering all of these factors, Henry uses kinds of logic and emotion that appealed to them. In the Convention, Following a discussion about negotiating with the British, Henry presents a counter argument, saying that the colonists should fight against the British. Patrick Henry uses a variety of literary devices in his speech to defend his point, and convince the audience about his argument. The most significant literary device used by Henry

Patrick Henry was a man with a vision; he attempts to persuade the delegates in virginia to see his vision the same way. He uses pathos to push his point through to the delegates. Henry says, “ For my own part I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom of slavery.”(Henry 2) Here he is clearly trying to appeal to the audience's emotion by making the delegates think, would it be better to be slaves to the British or have our own freedom. Henry wants the delegates to feel a certain way so they understand what they could be getting themselves out of by going to war with Britain. Henry again uses pathos when he says, “and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight!”(Henry 10) Henry gets loud here it is seen by the punctuation used, this shows his emotion he is showing here. When another man uses emotion in an argument it will tend to make the surrounding audience feel a certain way. At this moment Henry starts to get everyone's heart racing with his volume. This excitement pushing the statement to fight, he wants the delegates to feel the fight coming to know that it's coming and that they have the push to win it. He later continues by telling the men they were called weak and that they couldn't handle a government. But Henry continues by telling the delegates that they are not weak but strong and can win this battle that they would have to face. Henry makes it known he is emotional about going and winning this battle by the use of pathos all throughout this excerpt he gave them.

The use of rhetorical analysis is very useful to make works appealing and contribute effectively to the author’s purpose. They are used in Patrick Henry’s extemporaneous speech “Give Me Liberty, or Give me Death.” Henry, a revolutionary leader, made this speech at the meeting of the Virginia convention on March 23, 1775. The purpose of this speech was to persuade the delegates of the convention and colonists to form a militia and start war against the British to declare independence. This speech Patrick Henry uses parallelism, pathos, and allusion to persuade the Virginia delegates to go to war against Britain.

One of the best ways to persuade an audience is through emotion. Henry uses pathos to appeal to many sentiments, one of the most effective being fear. When the British militia starts quartering in American households, Henry knows that the situation needs to be stopped before it is too late. He writes that the British are “sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains…”. Henry alarms the colonists that if action is not taken soon, the Great Britain will gain the advantage. Patrick Henry also plays on the colonists overwhelming fear of becoming slaves. Henry threatens that the colonists will become exactly what they hate if they just stand by idle. He writes that it is “nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery…”. Henry uses this to scare the colonists into action and persuade them to take a stand against the British.

In his speech Henry convinced Virginia that all the acts of peace had not worked, and will never work. The solution he saw was to fight, and to start the fight immediately. Henry said that they had a right to fight and that God was on their side. From previous British actions, he foresaw war coming and instead of fearing war, he encouraged his audience to embrace

    Patrick Henry uses pathos in his speech to provoke delegate’s tender hearts into becoming submerged with heavy feelings towards the English. Patrick Henry exploits pathos to cause a buildup of wrath inside delegates in order to prove his point. An example of the application of pathos is seen in the following quote, “They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary..”(Henry 104). This quote displays pathos by using negatively charged words such as, “weak” to describe how the English view the colonists in hopes to demonize them. This causes an outburst of anger to circulate amongst delegates. Due to the realization of the undisputable truth of how they are viewed

Patrick Henry’s used many persuasive techniques to make people question their ideas, want to fight for what they have, and to give him and all those colonists of america liberty against Britain. One of the persuasive devices used to persuade those in the convention room to take action was rhetorical questions. An example of this is, “Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation?” He uses this to show that peace could not be made with Britain by word of mouth, and stresses the only way peace would be created with Britain would be by force. So, he tried to stress this rhetorical question to convince his audience peace will only come by force.

“I know not what others may choose but, as for me, give me liberty or give me death” (Henry). These famous words were delivered by the young Virginia representative, Patrick Henry, on March 23rd of 1775. He was a driving force in the upbringing of America and his use of pathos greatly influenced the nation’s future. Similar to most American politicians of the time, he was highly antagonistic towards British control in the colonies, and thus feared that if U.S. forces were not armed against them, the future of the nation would be in peril. In Patrick Henry’s “Speech to the Virginia Convention”, he utilizes pathos as a tool to aide him in persuading the Virginia Assembly to prepare America’s troops for battle against the British by evoking trepidation and concern from within his audience.

Pathos is in the beginning of the speech to grab the audience’s attention and give rise to fear at the situation. One of the first phrases to display this is Patrick Henry voicing “I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery” (Henry 102). His statement perceives the Colonies remaining under England’s rule as living in slavery. Using “slavery” as a loaded word causes the audience to have an awareness of the threatening circumstances. In turn, his words arouse fear in the revolutionaries once he conveys the position with regards to the conditions that they are in to the extremes of freedom and slavery. Additionally, Henry once again uses pathos in order to evoke feelings of determination and resolve to fight. Henry proclaims, “ I know not what what course others may take; but as for me,

Did you or have you ever wanted to go to war?Well if so then this article should show you how some of the people get you rallied up and ready for war. This is the Speech to the Virginia Convention spoken by Patrick Henry. Although many rationalist at that time were persuasive authors in their own right. Henry is considered one of the most persuasive,because he used ethos to add credibility to his cause, pathos to increase emotion and get the crowd involved, and logos in order to show facts and reason for going to war with Britain. Paragraph 2 Pathos: Henry was very patriotic for his country he loved nothing more greater than his country.