ipl-logo

Ethos And Pathos In Margaret Sanger's Speech

1351 Words6 Pages

In her pilgrimage to fight for women’s rights, activist Margaret Sanger created a speech on a severely controversial topic not only during her time period, but during our present time period as well. While many firmly disagreed with her and still do, she did bring to light a major disparity between sexes and social classes. By vocalizing her qualms with the rights of women, mainly in the middle and lower classes, to decide for themselves if they wish to have children or not. By voicing her opinions in an extremely misogynistic era she made herself a totem in women’s history. Women do have a right to decide for themselves if they wish to have children or not. In this essay I will be touching on the rhetorical devices, Ethos and Pathos. The rhetor …show more content…

In the beginning she talks about how throughout the centuries women have been slaves to men’s desires and philosophies. She evens relates men’s hold of women as the “shackles of slavery”. “We now know that there never can be a free humanity until woman is freed from ignorance, and we know, too, that woman can never call herself free until she is mistress of her own body. Just so long as man dictates and controls the standards of sex morality, just so long will man control the world” (pg.2). In this quote Sanger relates the the subjugation of women to the bondage of the freedom of humanity. She relates to the male audience by speaking of a Father and Husband who was a sober, hard working gentleman, who turned into an alcoholic when five more children were added to the family. She shows the importance of birth control not only for the health of the woman, but also the future of the child/children and father. She uses pathos to emotionally connect to the hardships faced by men in low and middle class families who cannot support their families due to to big of a …show more content…

The father, who was once straightlaced and hardworking, but had now turned into a drunk, and only two of the eleven children had any hope in life. She uses this as an example of what overpopulation can do to a family and the importance of birth control. This quote, displaying the lives of torn families, is an example of Pathos. Pathos is illustrated in this quote through the sadness and disparity that the people in the stories face and the dark future that they have. Sanger uses metaphors as her main rhetorical device. For example when she talks about the hardships that women have faced through the centuries, “Throughout the ages, every attempt woman has made to strike off the shackles of slavery has been met with the argument that such an act would result in the downfall of her morality” (Paragraph.1). In this example she uses “shackles of slavery” to define the hold men have had on women’s freedom to think and speak up for themselves. She also uses repetition, an example, the use of the word women throughout the speech. Examples of how she uses these two words

Show More
Related
1106 Words | 5 Pages

The main protagonist, who uses the rhetorical strategy of pathos, is the knight’s slave. The knight’s slave is a tall and strong man, who was taken from people who crossed the ocean to sell him for a higher price. In the story the writer, Tania Forwalker, creates the use of a rhetorical strategy called pathos; moreover, she creates a sense of pathos because of the influence of emotions she reflects on the audience. In the story the use of pathos describes many emotions, such as: depression, relationships, sacrifice, and fear.

Read More
332 Words | 2 Pages

Margaret Sanger was a nurse turned educator who opened the first US birth-control clinic. She was arrested for this, but eventually was legally allowed to open another clinic. Sangers made an enormous contribution to woman today. Her contributions allowed woman to gain some control over the decision of having children. She did this in a world where woman had very little rights.

Read More
534 Words | 3 Pages

Taylor Hurst Kaiser AP Lang 11 November 2015 Analysis of Margaret Sanger’s Speech on Birth Control Margaret Sanger, an American birth control activist, made an announcement titled “The Children’s Era,’ at the first national birth-control conference in March of 1925. In this speech, Sanger attempts to influence her ideas and beliefs on the importance of birth control and contraceptives to the health of society’s women. She also vividly explains how controlled childbearing would apply to children who would eventually be born.

Read More
1329 Words | 6 Pages

The context of the text was to support women’s rights by encouraging women to better themselves as wives by valuing intelligence and culture over beauty. The audience that this speech is targeted towards is women. She specifies women as the audience by tailoring her speech towards women and appealing to their emotions, situations, and circumstances. For example, she says, “I could not believe that God gad created so many homely women, and suffered all to lose their beauty in the very maturity of their powers, and yet made it our duty

Read More
1073 Words | 5 Pages

Trying to prevent neglected children and back-alley abortions, Margaret Sanger gave the moving speech, “The Children’s Era,” in 1925 to spread information on the benefits and need for birth control and women's rights. Margaret Sanger--activist, educator, writer, and nurse--opened the first birth control clinic in the United States and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. During most of the 1900’s, birth control and abortions were illegal in the United States, causing women to give birth unwillingly to a child they must be fully responsible for. This caused illness and possible death for women attempting self-induced abortion. Sanger uses literary devices such as repetition and analogies

Read More
992 Words | 4 Pages

Pathos is a rhetorical device used for providing emotion to the reader. He wants the reader to feel sympathetic towards the mistreatment of African-Americans. In the introduction, the first rhetorical device he introduced is pathos. Coates present pathos when he introduced Clyde Ross. He titles the first chapter as, “So that’s just one of my losses”.

Read More
520 Words | 3 Pages

The argument over a woman’s right to choose over the life of an unborn baby has been a prevalent issue in America for many years. As a birth control activist, Margaret Sanger is recognized for her devotion to the pro-choice side of the debate as she has worked to provide sex education and legalize birth control. As part of her pro-choice movement, Sanger delivered a speech at the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference in March of 1925. This speech is called “The Children’s Era,” in which she explains how she wants the twentieth century to become the “century of the child.” Margaret Sanger uses pathos throughout her speech as she brings up many of the negative possibilities that unplanned parenthood can bring for both children and parents.

Read More
785 Words | 4 Pages

Margaret Sanger Margaret Sanger, a feminist social reformer, argued that “women cannot be on equal footing with men until they have complete control over their reproductive functions”. Her argument improved our everyday life by providing more information on contraceptives, giving women the power to control their bodies, and changing the role of women and men. Margaret Sanger was determined and dedicated to provide women with information about contraceptives which eventually improved the lives of many women. During the Progressive Era, women had gained a lot more interest in becoming independent by working and improving their education.

Read More
540 Words | 3 Pages

“Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities” (Douglass, 252).

Read More
379 Words | 2 Pages

Besides illustrating how discrimination is being depicted towards black women in a time of slavery, Sojourner Truth also comments on how there should be no line between genders no matter the race, by addressing this matter it began to reach to a larger audience. Sojourner Truth begins by comparing the white American man to a black women slave, “[l]ook at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I am women?”

Read More
1359 Words | 6 Pages

adhered women’s rights to racial equality and social injustice by using her experiences of injustice and brutality as a slave, to connect with her audience. She pursued the idea of separation between the North and the South, insisting that women should join forces to fight for their rights, speaking up to be heard. She goes further to refute the common assumption that women are were delicate beings, created solely for beauty; women are transformed into feminine and fragile beings because of their size, strength, and stature compared to men’s, which deems them weaker than men. She does so by comparing the life of a slave woman to women in society, and men. “Look at me!

Read More
765 Words | 4 Pages

There are many writers that affect our emotions or that make us think that his or her statements are reasonable, whether they are authors of books, or script writers for a movie or a play. In Morgan Spurlock’s film, Supersize Me, he uses three common rhetorical strategies: ethos, pathos, and logos. He uses all three effectively, however pathos has the greatest effect out of all three rhetorical strategies. Spurlock uses ethos, or ethical appeal, in his film.

Read More
783 Words | 4 Pages

“No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body”. When Margaret Sanger spoke these words, she was expressing her belief on a woman’s right to have an abortion. This quote, however, speaks to the fact that women are oppressed on more than just abortions. In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Atwood portrays the dehumanization of sexuality through both the characters and events within the novel, therefore proving that women will always be considered less than men will. Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1939.

Read More
1141 Words | 5 Pages

Furthermore, the author displays a dystopian society completely dominated by a totalitarian and theocratic state. The main subject of this novel is the role assigned to women, mainly represented by the handmaids. In Gilead, the made-up country where the novel takes place, women are completely subjected by the government, and especially by men, who clearly have a higher status than women. Moreover, women’s freedom is entirely restricted, as they cannot leave their house at their will, they are forbidden to hold properties or jobs, they cannot read or write, and they are treated as sexual slaves whose only purpose in life is to bear children for elite spouses. The other option is a miserable, short life at the Colonies (a type of concentration camp), and death.

Read More
794 Words | 4 Pages

In the Victorian era, women were forced to marry, as they needed the security of a man. However, Austen uses logos to question the real inequality in the Victorian era’s ideology, that a woman is incomplete without a man. This allows the reader to analyse the state of society from a different perspective. Austen also starts her sentence with an assertive tone further supported with her firm word choices, through using the words, ‘…truth universally acknowledged’. These words are important in her building ethos allowing her to deliver her controversial message.

Read More

More about Ethos And Pathos In Margaret Sanger's Speech

Open Document