Rhetorical Devices In The Village By Walden Thoreau

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All through out Henry David Thoreau’s life his works have been rhetorically significant, in his piece Walden which was written in 1854 you can see what kind of strategical moves that me makes. In chapter 8, The Village, of Walden Thoreau uses many strategies to get his stories of what happened in the town to the reader, he uses rhetorical moves, appeals, and also figurative language which was tied into how he used his words. Rhetorically, Thoreau has different ways of speaking that shows he purpose and goal for his writing. Thoreau included a link to an old story about Orpheus, a man who was a sailor who traveled through the sirens that would try to lure him in and kill him. The situation that this context was in was how Thoreau would flee from the town to escape the temptations that were around him. This links purpose was to provide a simile that would further explain what Thoreau would do to get out of that town at the moment. It helps to make his point stronger, because everyone had heard of the stories of the sirens trying to …show more content…

Thoreau used the words “run the gauntlet” this in context means that he had to have a critical eye for everything that he saw around. The interesting part of this phrase is that it is also used in time of battle when the two fronts are ready to go against each other and lined up facing towards one another, and in the text Thoreau mentions right before about how all the houses are lined up on the sides of the street facing each other watch Thoreau as he goes past. Thoreau also when talking about walking through the darkness said “when the darkness was so thick that you could cut it with a knife” this statement had given personification to the darkness, in this it gives an idea as to how dark it gets at night when he walks in Thoreau’s perspective. Thoreau uses figurative language, words with more meaning, and much more to go more in depth about his

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