Rhetorical Devices Used In Where I Live And What I Lived For

Time: about 70 minutes

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” once stated by Thoreau. Henry David Thoreau was a simple man with a simple life. He yearned for simplicity. He was a very wise man as well. In his piece of writing “ Where I Lived and What I Lived For” Thoreau explains a life of simplicity separated from the complexity of society. In “Where I Live and What I lived For” Thoreau most effectively appeals to pathos through the use of allusion, similes, and imagery.
Throughout “Where I Lived and What I Lived for”, Thoreau uses allusion to evoke pathos. The first allusion Thoreau uses in “Where I Lived and What I Lived For” is, “...fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes...” (page 276).

This alludes to a Greek fable and to Book three of the Ilaid. In other words, Thoreau is trying to say like the pygmies fighting the cranes we busy ourselves with things in life that are not of importance. He is stating that it was thought that we grew up and stopped adding complications but in fact we have not. It gives the feeling of being childish and obtuse. That the way we are living is not the correct way. Another example of allusion that Thoreau uses is, “ With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail it by, looking another way, tired to the mast like Ulysses.” (page 280). Ulysses is another name for Odysseus. In a section of this epic poem there’s a story about how Odysseus and his crew sail through the sea and come across some sirens. The sirens try to tempt them into the sea so they can drown the men. Odysseus tells his crew to look away and plug their ears with wax to drown out the voices of the sirens, but Odysseus himself goes with no wax in his ears and still manages to not be called into the sea to his death. Thoreau uses this allusion to show that the world needs more people like Ulysses. Thoreau uses this to show that the sirens are the complicated things in life that people don’t need but yet follow and try to reach because it calls to them. He uses Ulysses to show that is it possible to have it there and to ignore it at the same time. Thoreau, in a way, makes people feel guilty for not being strong enough to ignore the forbidden fruits of life.
Similes occurred quite often throughout this piece of writing.

For example, “Our life is like a German Confederacy, made of up petty states,with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment.” (page 277). The German Confederacy was a group created to try to unify states. After the French Revolution things in europe got hectic. By creating the German Confederacy they tried to make everything easier and bring things back to order, but it ended up causing more of a problem. By using this simile, Thoreau was saying that life is much more complicated than it has to be. He gives the feeling of being ludicrous. That people complicate their lives with little things that don’t really matter much to the bigger picture. Another example in the text is, “ Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails.” (page 280). What Thoreau is saying is the we should spend one day just being, as in living life without complications. Spend one day not getting off track and making it complicated by little things that don’t matter. Thoreau uses similes to compare life of humans to simpler things to show that we too, do not have to be complicated. But yet we are so he uses similes to clarify his

points.
Imagery was another way Thoreau appealed to pathos in “ Where I Lived and What I Lived For”.

He uses imagery to show how complicated people make life; how much of life is unnecessary. In turn, it evokes emotional responses from the readers. An example is, “ Hardly a man takes a half-hour’s nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, “what’s the news?” as if the rest of man kind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every half-hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After a night‘s sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. “Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe”-- and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.” (page 278). In this part of the text Thoreau explains the life of a man. In the end however, it turns into a sorrowful ending. What Thoreau was trying to say in this part of the text is that people could go experience things themselves instead of listening to stories. Instead of staying home and asking what is happening with the world, you could experience it yourself and that it is unnecessary to hear the stories in the

newspaper.
Thoreau most effectively appeals to pathos through the use of imagery, allusion, and similes in “Where I Lived and What I Lived For”. With allusion he mostly uses allusions to greek mythology. With allusions from The Odyssey it makes a person feel weak because of the choices they make in life. With similes, Thoreau uses examples like the German Confederacy to get across the point of being too complex. He makes a person feel ignorant for the way they are living because they did not choose simplicity. Last, but not least Thoreau uses imagery to show a person how simple life could be and how complicated we make our lives. Thoreau uses these devices to evoke an emotional response from his readers so they can better understand how complicated we make our lives when really it could be simple.