The Art of Persuasion
An activist is a person who seeks for social or economic change; similarly, an extremist is someone who holds intense beliefs and acts upon them. An extreme activist is when someone has fanatical beliefs about social issues and seeks to change them in utmost ways. Two examples of extreme activists are Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr. Henry David Thoreau was an American author that was motivated by his disgust with slavery to write the persuasive commentary “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”, which was written to instruct his audience to be that counter-friction to the “machine” of government. Martin Luther King Jr. was an African American preacher during the Civil Rights era who was thrown into jail for simply standing up for what he believed in; while in jail, a group of white clergymen wrote …show more content…
Thoreau asked, “This American government, -- what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity?” (940; par. 2). By asking this question, even though he did not intend an answer, he pushed his audience to question the government and its unjust policies. Thoreau also asked the questions, “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then?” (941; par. 1). Nobody likes to feel irrelevant, so when Thoreau asked these questions he intended to make the audience angry with the government in thinking so. The rhetorical questions that Thoreau utilized in his writing were clearly effective in persuading his
An activist is a person who seeks for social or economic change; similarly, an extremist is someone who holds intense beliefs and acts upon them. An extreme activist is when someone has fanatical beliefs about social issues and seeks to change them in utmost ways. Two examples of extreme activists are Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr. Henry David Thoreau was an American author that was motivated by his disgust with slavery to write the persuasive commentary “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”, which was written to instruct his audience to be that counter-friction to the “machine” of government. Martin Luther King Jr. was an African American preacher during the Civil Rights era who was thrown into jail for simply standing up for what he believed in; while in jail, a group of white clergymen wrote …show more content…
Thoreau asked, “This American government, -- what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity?” (940; par. 2). By asking this question, even though he did not intend an answer, he pushed his audience to question the government and its unjust policies. Thoreau also asked the questions, “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then?” (941; par. 1). Nobody likes to feel irrelevant, so when Thoreau asked these questions he intended to make the audience angry with the government in thinking so. The rhetorical questions that Thoreau utilized in his writing were clearly effective in persuading his