Freethinking, nonconformity, dissent, and heresy. All four of these words are synonyms, yet when one is considered a freethinker, they are praised as an individual, as thoughtful, as admirable; but when one is a heretic, they are insane, they are thrown out as such, and there name is never heard again. In the United States, we hold the right to peaceful protest for our nonconformist thoughts. We hold the right to rebel against our country if it takes away our freedoms. A world where this right is taken away is a world that Locke and Sartre look down upon. A world where heresy is a crime punishable to death is a world that will not experience radical change, it is a world where an individual cannot think as such, but instead must think on behalf
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The first example of this is a hyperbole that states “Heresy begins with people who are to all appearance better than their neighbors. A gentle and pious girl… may… wreck both church and empire.” There are two exaggerations seen here. Firstly, that the only people capable of heresy are people who appear better than those around them. Secondly, that one person alone can completely destroy an empire. The hyperbole was used to show the audience how an everyday person has the capability of being the cruelest and most threatening entity to the empire, which in itself is also an exaggeration. Another appeal to tropes is simile. Shaw says “the women who quarrels her clothes and puts on the dress of a man, is like a man who throws off his fur gown and dresses like John the Baptist.” He continues to explain that those that will follow are wild and crazy. The use of this simile shows the audience that those who follow heretics are not only threats to the empire, but are also ultimately insane. Lastly, Shaw uses another hyperbole that says “nothing is so cruel in its consequences as the toleration of heresy.” He is, again, instill fearing into the audience and expanding on the impacts of heresy. Ultimately, the use of rhetoric in this piece was to function as a means of impact calculus. Continuously, Shaw was bashing on how terrible it would be to allow for heresy, on how it would lead to the fall of the world as we know
The first example of this is a hyperbole that states “Heresy begins with people who are to all appearance better than their neighbors. A gentle and pious girl… may… wreck both church and empire.” There are two exaggerations seen here. Firstly, that the only people capable of heresy are people who appear better than those around them. Secondly, that one person alone can completely destroy an empire. The hyperbole was used to show the audience how an everyday person has the capability of being the cruelest and most threatening entity to the empire, which in itself is also an exaggeration. Another appeal to tropes is simile. Shaw says “the women who quarrels her clothes and puts on the dress of a man, is like a man who throws off his fur gown and dresses like John the Baptist.” He continues to explain that those that will follow are wild and crazy. The use of this simile shows the audience that those who follow heretics are not only threats to the empire, but are also ultimately insane. Lastly, Shaw uses another hyperbole that says “nothing is so cruel in its consequences as the toleration of heresy.” He is, again, instill fearing into the audience and expanding on the impacts of heresy. Ultimately, the use of rhetoric in this piece was to function as a means of impact calculus. Continuously, Shaw was bashing on how terrible it would be to allow for heresy, on how it would lead to the fall of the world as we know