Rhetorical devices are one of the most useful methods of portraying an attitude in a text. Of the exuberant number possibilities, rhetorical questions are some of the most provocative and influential tools in an argument. As the author, Hawthorne takes advantage of this mechanism to share Hester’s view of her life and the life of women. “Indeed, the same dark question often arose into her mind with reference to the whole race of womanhood. Was existence worth accepting, even to the happiest among them?” This rhetorical question exudes a completely negative attitude. How is she questioning the existence women? As a woman, questioning the value of women’s’ lives can be interpreted as suicidal! This questioning adds morbid undertone to the message being expressed. As the excerpt progresses, Hester remains on this earth, but reconciles that the only solution is that, “the whole system of society is to be torn down.” This depressed mood is expressed through the author’s rhetorical questioning in the passage.…show more content… The uses of the word “dark”, in the first line of the passage asserts an overarching message that the rest of the reading will be negative. This effort works because it injects a negative tone for the rest of the passage which is then reinforced with a plethora of words such as” dismissed”,” hopeless”, and “evaporated”. These words produce a cloud of emotion that lingers over the entire excerpt. Like a Brazilian boa strangling the life from its Vermin prey, the insertion of the word “Hopeless” pulls the positivity from the paragraph. Then, as the serpent squeezes the last breath from the creature, “evaporated” causes any hope to vanish from the tone of the passage. The intentional distribution of these dismal words from Hawthorne maintains a negative tone and tone of life from the character Hester
