Virginia Convention Speech
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In the “Speech in the Virginia Convention” Patrick Henry delivers a speech that grabs his audiences attention. Patrick Henry persuades his audience who are the delegates to prepare for war by using rhetorical devices such as ethos, rhetorical questions, and allusion.
Patrick Henry uses ethos quite often in his speech one example of this would be near the begging of his speech where he says” of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the
house.”(Patrick Henry)
By saying this he is commenting the delegates in the same room so they can respect him in return or to relate with him. A main reason he uses ethos is to get his audience to relate them self with the opinions and ideas of Patrick Henry. It also used in his speech to show his audience that he is a follower of god and they to are followers so it is there “great responsibility which we hold to God”(Patrick Henry) to fight back. Overall Patrick Henry uses ethos to gain his audiences trust and good judgment.
He also uses rhetorical questions to get his audience to think of consequences or rethink there previous thoughts of the subject, examples of this are towards the end of his speech where he tries to show that there arguments are being ignored “And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing”(Patrick Henry) but it doesnt seem to work to keep arguing but to better fight back. He uses the device to “brainwash” his audience to understand that all that they try or do isnt leading to results that they can be satisfied with and so they must re-think there thoughts.
Patrick Henry also uses Allusion to involve God, which is really effective since during the time period everyone is religious and do to something for gods will was the