Sojourner Truth Rhetorical Analysis

In 1851, a fifty-four-year-old woman was able to speak for not only for herself but many others that have suffered similar treatments by society based on physical characteristics. During that century, a majority of America considered only men that had the skin color of print paper be someone of superiority. When Sojourner Truth had given her speech, a message of equality for both African-Americans and women, she was able to persuade many of the people at the lecture to see it from her perspective that every human being should have the right to be treated the same as everyone else. Speeches have a powerful ability to persuade others to believe in what the speaker is saying. Through many literary devices, this not only allows them to succeed …show more content…
However even though the two prominent historical figures did have the same idea, both speeches had used a different type of appeal that was both efficient and effective in the audience’s persuasion. With Sojourner Truth, she had used the pathos, the emotional appeal, that had gained her empathy from the audience. As majority of the people in the convention were people that had a loved one that they hold dear, a preponderance amount of them would understand Truth’s situation, as she had “thirteen children, and seen most...sold off to slavery” and understand the heartache that she had gone through during that dark period of time in her life (Truth). With her speaking of her history, this allowed the audience to see Truth as someone and for them to see that the treatment done to the African-Americans and women were discriminatory toward them, toward human beings. While in Anthony’s speech, she had used logos, the logical appeal, in her dialogue. Susan B. Anthony had been able to cite a historical analogy between a speech of the preamble of the Federal Constitution and the current …show more content…
By doing this, the authors are not only able to persuade their audience, but as well as efficiently gain their audience’s full attention by rhetorical devices such as imagery, flashback, and many other rhetorical devices that have similar characteristic to this. In Mark Twain’s speech, he uttered of how his partner and him needed three dollars to start a newspaper syndicate, so he “espied a valuable dog on the street...sold him to a man for three dollar...afterward the owner of the dog came along and...got three dollars from him for telling him where the dog” was during that time( Twain).This creates a more personal connection between the audience and Mark Twain, himself, as he had been willing to share an event that had been the changing point in his life, that had led him to live a life of honesty. He creates an atmosphere of trust and safety that allow the viewers to actually consider his pieces of advice are meant to help them, to allow them to “have all the virtues that anyone will honor and respect” throughout their lifetime. Though Twain does use a device that illustrates an image within the audience’s mental mind, it is not the only rhetorical device that does this. Within Rose Schneiderman’s “The Deaths in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire,” she described how it “is not the first time girls have been burned

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Rhetorical Analysis Of Sojourner Truth