Cesar Chavez Rhetorical Devices

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Cesar Chavez During the 1960’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a civil rights movement activist. He used nonviolence to fight for what he believed until he was assassinated in 1968. In the article Cesar Chavez pleads to the audience that the only way to achieve meaningful change is not by killing or violence, but by nonviolent actions. His use of diction, appeals, and juxtaposition show the people that there is only one way to make change last. Chavez utilizes emotional diction to develop his argument about nonviolent resistance. He refers to history when explaining who would get killed in a case of violent revolution, which would sadly be the workers who give their bodies and do not gain much from it. Chavez chose his words to represent that nonviolence is more powerful than violence itself. The words give …show more content…

In the first several paragraphs Chavez uses pathos to appeal to your emotions, by having influences from the bible and about mortality. In paragraph 4, he applies logos when he says, “ If we resort to violence then one of two things will happen. . .” He also claims we must balance the strategies of what we are doing; however, know that no matter how much misery or poverty nothing is more important than human life. This statement pulls on a persons morals therefore appealing to your emotion. Cesar Chavez mixes ethos and logos when saying, “ If we fail, there are those who will see violence as the shortcut to change.” He is backing this statement up in the previous paragraphs when explaining what would transpire. Once again he uses ethos when referring to Gandhi's teaching about the boycott. When stating that “. . .victory would cause a struggle of becoming a mechanical thing. . .” he mixes logos and pathos because your feelings would become robot like. The article ends with pathos when he says, “The rich may have money, but the poor have