Patrick Henry Rhetorical Questions

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In 1775, Patrick Henry proposed his Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death speech at the Virginia Convention to persuade America to go to war with Britain. America tried different ways of approaching the situation, but Britain wouldn’t give in. Henry was tired of America being Britain’s slave and wanted independence now. In his speech, he used many literary devices such as rhetorical questions, repetition, and parallelism to convince the colonists to fight for freedom. Throughout the speech, Henry asked many rhetorical questions to help his argument. In the middle of the passage, he asked multiple questions: “And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer …show more content…

Some examples are when he says, "We must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight!" War was necessary and he greatly emphasized it. Britain took advantage of Americans and didn’t take them seriously. Henry knew that the only way was for Americans have to gather their forces and battle to gain their rights. The title of this speech is an example of parallelism. Parallelism is when parts of a sentence are repeated or similar. When Henry said “Give me liberty or give me death” he is implying that he will fight until he is dead and he hopes that the other colonists will too. He also uses parallelism to question when the people will take action: "Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house?" Henry said that war had already begun, but now it’s time for the colonists to take control. Henry’s use of the rhetorical questions, parallelism, and repetition was effective. Colonists realized that protesting wasn’t working and the only way to separate from Britain was to go to war. They also realized they must work together and use all power available. America went to war with Britain and gained independence, although there were many

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