Pathos, Ethos, Logos: Thoreau’s Attempts at Persuasion to Action

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Pathos, Ethos, Logos: Thoreau’s Attempts at Persuasion to Action

Henry David Thoreau was a poet, social philosopher, and educator in the early to mid- 1800s (Hampton). He graduated from Harvard University in 1837 and, upon his return to his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, befriended Ralph Waldo Emerson, also a philosopher and poet (Hampton, “Ralph Waldo Emerson”). Emerson was also the leader of the Transcendentalist movement which was based on the idea that people should lead by example -- social reform begins with the individual, not the government -- and that the movement should be peaceful (Woodlief, Ruehl). Thoreau agreed with this approach until the United States invaded Mexico in May, 1846 (Brown, Witherell). Opposed to slavery, Thoreau saw the invasion of Mexico as an attempt by the government to extend slavery westward. In his essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” published in 1849 with the original title, “Resistance to Civil Government,” Thoreau protests against the government and states that is a man’s duty to rise up against the government when the government commits a wrong (Thoreau). In his writings, Thoreau uses the three rhetorical approaches of Pathos, Ethos, and Logos in his attempts to persuade his readers to his point of view (Heinrichs).

Pathos is prevalent throughout Thoreau’s essay. He uses pathos in an attempt to persuade his readers into making a logical and ethical choice. The essay as a whole is an attempt to anger the reader into taking action against what Thoreau sees as an unjust government. When he refers to “the mass of men” who are in service to the country, the soldiers, as being the “same worth only as horse and dogs” and of serving “the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines...

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Hampton, Thomas. “Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862).” I Hear America Singing. PBS.org.,

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________. “Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882).” I Hear America Singing. PBS.org., n. d.

Web. 24 May 2014.

Heinrichs, Jay. Thank You for Arguing. 1st ed. revised. Three Rivers Press: New York, New

York, 2013.

Ruehl, Robert M. Transcendental Disseminations: How a Movement Spread Its Ideas. n. p.,

2011. Web. 24 May 2014.

Thoreau, Henry D. Civil Disobedience. 1849. Web. 23 May 2014.

Witherell, Elizabeth and Elizabeth Dubrulle. “Life and Times of Henry David Thoreau.” The

Writings of Henry D. Thoreau. n. p., 1995. Web. 25 May 2014.

Woodlief, Ann. “Henry David Thoreau: Biography.” the web of American

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