Rhetorical Analysis Of Speech By Florence Kelley

Among all my essays that exhibited varying degrees of success from effectively investigating Pudd'nhead Wilson to neglecting half the prompt, my greatest essay analyzed Florence Kelley's rhetorical strategies in her speech denouncing child labour. Opening with historical background on the necessity for a workforce in the early twentieth century, the introductory paragraph investigated the era's controversy regarding child labour and Kelley's position on the topic, citing Kelley's "ardent and audacious tone… to the mothers of society." Following the SOAPS-tone of the exposition, my thesis utilized incendiary language decrying the "horrifying conditions of child labour" while also boldly highlighting Kelley's "allusive comparison between the …show more content…
Identifying Kelley's polysyndeton and metaphor in her establishment of the workforce conditions as "among 'deafening noise of spindles and looms and spinning and weaving,'" my analysis elevated the comparison as I highlighted the societal view of children "not as innocent youths, but as machines to mechanically produce staples." Additional evidence in the paragraph also included Kelley's "description of children as they 'spin and weave cotton underwear'" and classification "of children as 'little beasts of burden,'" both of which allowed me to connect Kelley's position to the steady societal loss of "emotional connection" and the "public's view of [the young workforce] not as human, but as an animal… [for] simple tasks," respectively. As I heightened and identified the implicit meaning in Kelley's rhetorical comparisons, I elevated my own work to analyze Kelley's best evidence in her appeal to