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Speech To The Virginia Convention By Patrick Henry Rhetorical Devices

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Speech To The Virginia Convention By Patrick Henry Rhetorical Devices
In the “Speech to the Virginia Convention” (1775) Patrick Henry convinced colonists to fight against Britain; he uses four main rhetorical devices, rhetorical questions, allusions, imagery, and parallelism. Through these devices he softens his tone to get his fiery messages across. With rhetorical questions he suggests the answer he wants the colonists to make. Likewise, as he uses imagery, colonists can better understand the whole picture. One device that he employs is asking a rhetorical question, which is a question that is not meant to be answered but to be pondered. “Is it that insidious smile which our petition has been lately received?” (---). Here, Henry is asking colonists to really think about their concerns and how England is actually not paying attention to them. …show more content…
Henry would rather confront the issue then push it away. He rather takes the consequences than anything. “We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded” he uses parallelism to let them know how much they have done, shown from different perspectives to let Britain know that he is serious.
In conclusion, Patrick Henry uses these rhetorical devices towards Britain to ease his way to get his thoughts across. The devices work because he is able to get into their heads and make a call to action. Henry uses Rhetorical questions to make them think about his thoughts he is asking. He alluded to many well know stories at the time, which was more gentle than saying harsher things. Two other devices he uses are imagery and parallelism. His speech today is very known and it worked against the Britains at the time to go to
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