Michael Mack's Speech Rhetorical Devices

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Did you know that Shakespeare married a woman named Anne Hathaway? Does not that name remind you of a famous actress? I guess Shakespeare relates more to us than even Michael Mack, who wrote the speech we will be talking about today called Why Read Shakespeare, recognized himself. In Mack’s speech he was trying to persuade freshmen in college that Shakespeare actually relates to their everyday life and understanding what he was talking about will help you grow as a person. He used rhetoric devices to explain and keep the attention of his audience. Other than repetition, hyperbole, and paradox for the devices, he also uses examples and analogies to get his point across. Unfortunately, his examples and analogies aren’t up to par to the rest of his rhetoric devices that he uses most excellently.
To start off, he explains that “..in this fiction you learn about sin and forgiveness. And you also learn about yourself.” (Lines 77-78) when talking about a passage from the Bible. The passage is a parable called the Prodigal Son. Now though Mack is
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What about those who came to this college without devoting some of their time to reading the Bible? These sort of people cannot relate to what he is talking about if they do not know what he is talking about. “As you interpret the parable you find that it interprets you- and in multiple ways.” (Line 81) How can anyone interpret something they do not know? It makes it impossible for you to understand or even comprehended.
Another thing he tries to use the example about the mirror analogy but assumes that all of his audience members are deep thinkers and can understand and even relate to what he is talking about. “When you read a great book, the idea is, you