Strengths And Weaknesses Of William Wallace's Speech In Braveheart

Braveheart is an historical war movie from 1995. This movie tells a story of the true events about William Wallace who a Scottish warrior led his people to fight with England for freedom. In the movie, there is a great speech which is presented by William Wallace when they face Scottish Army. This essay will evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the speech. It is a short speech which only last for about two minutes, but it is inspirational. In the beginning of the speech, William briefly introduces himself, “Sons of Scotland, I am William Wallace.” Because most warriors in the army have not seen him before and there are rumors about how he looked like, a young soldier comes out and questions that he is not William Wallace. William makes a joke to answer the …show more content…
Pathos is used in this statement, and it stirs up his army to cheer and face up their enemies. According to the article in the Wall Street Journal, Shellenbarger (2013) states that speaker’s voice is matters twice as much as the content of the message. As we can see, William keep increase his voice in the climax, and it successfully makes his army feel what he want to them feel. Additionally, William repeats “one chance” in high voice for two times in the short sentences. Repetition is a simple device, but it is powerful in impact. According to the explanation in Literary Devices (n.d), repetition not only promotes idea clear, but makes audience accept the idea. This rhetorical device efficiently helps to deliver message that the fight for freedom is important because it may never come again. In conclusion, this is an inspirational movie speech. Ethos, pathos, and logos are shown in this speech and those modes play an important role to convince William’s army. Some rhetorical devices also can be found in this speech, such as rhetorical question and repetition, and those devices make this speech