Cesar Chavez Rhetorical Devices

In Cesar Chavez’s article, he uses many rhetorical devices to help give the reader a better understanding of how important nonviolence vs violence is. Chavez explains how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi have endowed reasons of nonviolence worth following.
One of the strongest and most frequently used rhetorical device is Chavez’s use of personification. The first use I noticed of personification was when he said, “This observance of Dr. King’s death gives us the best possible opportunity to recall the principles with which our struggle has grown and matured.” stating that the way they fight back with their nonviolence has grown and matured. Chavez believed that violence is created by not being patient with the problem but with

yourself. Chavez’s mother taught him as a child growing up around workers that nonviolence is the best way. She also taught him to turn the other cheek and help those that are less fortunate than you. Chavez uses personification again stating, “The burdens of generations of poverty and powerlessness lie heavy in the fields of America.” Chavez explains that generation after generation, there is constantly poverty and powerlessness. He is saying that there has been no change for the better. His last use of personification is declaring that, “Time is our ally.” He believes that time is our friend; it’s there to help us. Time is in our favor.
Chavez uses repetition in his article to drill what he is trying to say in our heads.

Lines 8-10 implies that there is no cause just enough to kill a man. He says, “Our conviction is that human life is a very special possession given by God to man and that no one has the right to take it for any reason or for any cause, however just it may be.” In lines 71-72, Chavez uses repetition again stating, “When you lose your sense of life and justice, you lose your strength.” Chavez uses repetition in that sentence to emphasize that if you lose what sense you have of life and justice, then you will have no strength.
Last but not least, Chavez uses an oxymoron in line 45. He says, “We advocate militant nonviolence as our means of achieving justice for our people, but we are not blind to the feelings of frustration, impatience and anger which seeth inside every worker.” In the sentence provided, he also uses a strong word choice and personification to give you a mental picture of the madness that laces every worker’s insides. Cesar Chavez once said, “In some cases nonviolence requires more militancy than violence.”
Chavez is one of the greatest Civil Rights activists of times. As a child he watched workers be mistreated and misused. He follows King and Gandhi’s principles of nonviolence and lives by their standards. He also believes that the highest form of freedom carries with it the greatest measure of

discipline.