Rhetorical Analysis Of Benjamin Banneker

Rhetorical strategies are strategies that writers use to further persuade the reader to lean a certain direction on a point of view of a belief whether the standpoint be morally good or morally bad. Benjamin Banneker a farmer, astronomer, mathematician, surveyor, and author had variety of experience in many fields which allowed him to have more intelligence when thinking about using variety of rhetorical strategies. When writing this specific excerpt he had a lot of choices to use but mainly Banneker used comparison and contrasts when he wrote to Thomas Jefferson about his standpoint on slavery. During this excerpt of the letter that he sent to Jefferson, Banneker used a lot of comparisons to differentiate slavery to other topics such as the British Crown’s tyranny. The other strategy that is less common used is the Pathos from the Aristotelian appeals. Pathos basically in the most simplest terms means to appeals to the emotions that each humans have such as happiness, sadness, and other basic emotions. …show more content…
Banneker talks about how bad slavery is and how bad Britain ruled the colonies and he compares and contrasts these two. To compare oppressing slavery and the tyrants who ruled Britain to one another was upon a great gesture and this is the main reason why Banneker’s argument was so strong against slavery. This comparison is similar to what a simile and a metaphor is but it just directly compares them and it strengthens his claim about slavery that much further than it would be without comparing and contrasting. Simply, the comparison that Banneker made was used to make the audience feel how bad slavery is and how extreme the situation is. The problem with slavery is very dire and that is how Banneker was able to convey