To His Coy Mistress Rhetorical Analysis

Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his bold novel, The Scarlet Letter tackles a variety of themes that include: sin, guilt, redemption, postfeminism, and organized religion's abuse of power. Hawthorne spoke in a somber and grim tone, designed to arouse a sense of suspense for his readers. The audience in which he was addressing would have been conservative Christians and women suffragettes, all of whom reflected the ideologies during this time period. By instilling clever diction, Hawthorne exposes hypocrisy in Puritanism and objects against the religion's superfluous punishments; which force individuals to endure unnecessary and extreme suffering.

Marvell, Andrew. "To His Coy Mistress." The Hudson Book of Poetry: 150 Poems worth Reading. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. 17-18.

fate of the lovers will be, as well as the state of his own feelings

‘To His Coy Mistress’ was written by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678). The poem is a metaphysical poem, which was mostly used in the seventeenth century and was classed as a highly intellectual type of poetry and mainly expressed the complexities of love and life; just as this poem is. In brief the poem is about seizing every opportunity in life and not caring about the past or future. In other words ‘seize the day’. The poem also explores the nature of seduction.

The speaker in Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress'; is a man who is addressing a silent listener, who happens to be his mistress. In this dramatic monologue the speaker tries to explain his feelings to his mistress. The speaker uses many allusions to empires and other objects, events and ideas that are not directly related to his feelings, in order to explain how he feels. He uses these allusions to exaggerate his feelings in order to clearly show them. After reading over the poem once, you get a sense of what the speaker is feeling. Upon further analysis of the poem you realize that the allusions used in the poem, are in fact, what makes this poem so interesting.

Award winning journalist and author, Jon Krakauer, in his book, Into the Wild, analyzes the life of Chris McCandless as well as the events that ensued his death. Krakauer’s purpose is to inform the reader about how and why Chris McCandless decided to embark on a journey into the wilderness of Alaska. He adopts an empathetic tone in order to impart to his readers that Chris McCandless was a very misunderstood young adult.

telling her that if he had all the time in the world he would use it

Mr. Henry gave a speech at the Virginia convention and his speech appealed to pathos, ethos, and logos. Mr. Henry gave a speech asking the people do they agree to rather fight or do they rather not fight. He appeals to pathos by asking emotion questions and giving emotional quotes he uses logos by appealing to logic and he uses ethos by using credibility all to persuade them to fight.

In D. H. Lawrence’s essay “On The Scarlet Letter,” Lawrence analyzes Nathaniel Hawthorne’s portrayal of the adulteress Hester Prynne. He argues that Hester’s character is not worthy of the praise she receives in The Scarlet Letter because of the severity of the sin she commits in the novel. Instead of focusing on Hester’s character after the sin, he bases his argument on the sin itself. Lawrence uses terse syntax, an accusatory tone, and biblical allusions to depict Hester as the sinner of the story.

At initial glimpse of the poem’s title, one might easily misperceive the objective of the lyric as a whole and immediately assume the worst due to the evolution of terminology over time. When Marvell uses the lexeme ‘mistress’, he is referring to the term ‘lover’. In modern day terminology, ‘mistress’ could be interpreted as ‘an individual with whom an affair is occurring’.

In Hawthorne's description of Hester on the pedestal he paints this shameful picture of Hester. He describes her in a guilty manner and emphasizes the pain Hester is feeling from this shame. Hawthorne expresses all of this guilt and pain in his first set of parallel phrases. For instance he repeats "a fixed gaze" twice in order to show the reader the intenseness of this part and then goes on to say the sun is "lighting up her shame" and making her "sin" clear to everyone watching her. He also refers to the "midday sun" as lighting up her shame and therefore making it more visible to the "whole people." He even goes as far as to describe her child as "sin-born" when she makes eye contact with the stranger, who is found out to be her husband. This adds to her feeling of guilt as Hawthorne makes it clear the baby in her arms is not her husband's child. Yet when he gets to the second set of parallel phrases he has this complete rhetorical shift and this whole guilty look of Hester disintegrates into one of almost sympathy. He goes from shaming and making Hester look guilty to describing how her privacy has kind of been torn away from her because of this whole situation. For example, he makes note of private affairs and compares them to the event taking place, he says things such as "features that should have been seen only in the quiet gleam of the fireside."

attention of this mistress so that he can scare her and rush her into making a

The speaker in this poem seems frustrated; he delicately tries to inform his coy mistress that their death is near, and they still have not had sexual intercourse. In lines 17-33 the poem seems to lose the exaggeration sense and suddenly becomes serious. He (the speaker) reinsures his coy mistress that ³you deserve this state?(state of praise and high acknowledgment), ³But at my back I always hear, Time¹s winged chariot hurrying near? Andrew Marvell uses and interesting image in line 22 (the line mentioned above) when suggesting to his coy mistress that death is near. He substitutes the word ³death?for a more gentle, delicate term of ³Time¹s winged chariot? This term was probably used to prevent from frightening such a coy mistress. Marvell continues to involve the reader¹s imagination through unimaginable images. What do ³Deserts of vast eternity?look like? In fact, Marvell probably used such abstract images to suggest to his coy mistress that their future is indeterminable, and ³Thy beauty shall no more be found? Perhaps, beauty is what the coy mistress is so concerned with and the speaker in this case is trying to frighten her to have sex with him quicker. He continues to use intense imagery when describing to his coy mistress that even after death the ³worms shall try That long preserved virginity? The speaker now abstractly describes that holding on to your virginity for

In the first stage of the poem he uses time, as he flatters the Coy

‘To His Coy Mistress’ Is a love poem by Andrew Marvel. The poem is ‘carpe diem’ which translates to seize the day, this means the poem does not take its time its blunt and straight to the point. The poem contains a thesis, antithesis and synthesis, the main argument points of the poem. The poem is split into three stanza’s which are used to persuade the woman to give up her virginity before her beauty dies. It is a conventional poem for its time in the 17th century.