In Thomas Paine’s speech to the citizens, he uses many techniques to persuade them to defend America, their home, and fight the opposing side. Paine uses biblical references, parallelism, and strong words and phrases to convey his message to the audience. These techniques are used to help strengthen his speech and help the audience see in the same way he is about the topic at hand.
Paine incorporated biblical references into his speech to grasp the attention of the religious people in the audience and to provide them with something that they previously know about as an example and reference to what is going on. Paine explains to the citizens that everybody in the country should come together and help each other in the war. “Say not that thousands are gone” so the country can be saved and not destroyed. If everybody “turns out” their “tens of thousands” then there will be plenty of people to fight. He mentions that when they do win it will be due to the surrender of the opposing side and it will be “a peace which passeth all understanding.” The biblical references allow not only the audience, but future readers to connect to it and see his viewpoints.
He also uses parallelism in his speech, which gains the attention of the crowd and provides a sense of emphasis to his speech. The repetition of the same thing over and over also …show more content…
When talking about the other side, he uses words that are associated with negative things and calls them “stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish men” to degrade them and make them appear as the lesser power of the two. He refers to their presence as a “curse” to them and says that their actions are out of “cowardice.” Paine also uses positive words when speaking of his country to get the crowd thinking about how great their “glorious” country is and make them want to protect
Paine incorporated biblical references into his speech to grasp the attention of the religious people in the audience and to provide them with something that they previously know about as an example and reference to what is going on. Paine explains to the citizens that everybody in the country should come together and help each other in the war. “Say not that thousands are gone” so the country can be saved and not destroyed. If everybody “turns out” their “tens of thousands” then there will be plenty of people to fight. He mentions that when they do win it will be due to the surrender of the opposing side and it will be “a peace which passeth all understanding.” The biblical references allow not only the audience, but future readers to connect to it and see his viewpoints.
He also uses parallelism in his speech, which gains the attention of the crowd and provides a sense of emphasis to his speech. The repetition of the same thing over and over also …show more content…
When talking about the other side, he uses words that are associated with negative things and calls them “stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish men” to degrade them and make them appear as the lesser power of the two. He refers to their presence as a “curse” to them and says that their actions are out of “cowardice.” Paine also uses positive words when speaking of his country to get the crowd thinking about how great their “glorious” country is and make them want to protect