Assignment: Rhetorical Strategies in Patrick Henry's Speech

Answer the following questions in the boxes provided which will expand as you type. Save the document to your computer then submit your completed work to your teacher in Blackboard.

1. Much of the speech depends on the power of the rhetorical question. List three examples of rhetorical questions used in this passage.

2. Why do you suppose Henry used this strategy so frequently in the course of this speech?

3. Henry uses biblical allusions to ask God's authority to the argumentation of his cause. List two instances of biblical allusion in the speech.

4. Why do you suppose Henry used this strategy so frequently in the course of this speech?

5. Henry also alludes to Greek mythology when he says, "We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts." To what does he compare the "song of that siren"?

In paragraph 3, Henry said, "If we wish to be free--if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!"

6. How does the punctuation in the excerpt above illustrate the speaker's tone?

7. Henry enumerates several strategies the colonists have already tried that did not work. List them along with the results of their attempts.

8. Find an example of deductive reasoning, for which Patrick Henry begins with a general example and then uses specific examples to support that conclusion.

9. Find an example of inductive reasoning, for which Patrick Henry draws a general conclusion from a few specific examples.