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Rhetorical Analysis Of The Crisis By Thomas Paine

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In Thomas Paine’s speech, “The Crisis, I” written during the retreat of Washington’s troops after a defeat in New Jersey, Paine’s intention was to inspire the troops to continue fighting for American independence from Britain. He adopts an inspirational tone to convey his thoughts to the American army through an appeal to religion, emotion and varying sentence structures. Paine’s syntactical structuring ranges from cumulative to periodic in order to gather the troops to raise their fighting spirit. He uses repetition in his sentences to emphasize that the British have committed heinous actions against the colonists, taxing them and using military force to guarantee American cooperation. Paine varies his sentence lengths for extra emphasis on some particular topics such as the colonists not declaring independence earlier. He writes that they could have used the winter as an advantage and to not properly make use of the winter was a fault on the American’s behalf. Paine follows this statement with a shorter sentence establishing and restoring hope to the American army, with a belief that the colonists could still triumph over the British. Not only did his syntactical structure aid his inspirational speech, Paine’s appeal to the …show more content…

Being that the Americans were mostly religious and believed in a common God, Paine utilized their religion to inspire the troops. Paine writes that the “God Almighty” would not abandon his people to the destruction of the British military. He condemns the British and their limitless power, claiming that the only person who should wield all of the power to control a country should be God. Paine’s religious appeals strengthen the army’s morale, porviding hope and moral strength for the troops to succeed in their battle for independence from Britain. Besides teh use of religion, Paine also uses an appeal to the emotions of the army, helping to inspire the army to continue marching towards

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