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Patrick Henry Ethos

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Speeches Essay

The major ideal held by both Martin Luther King Jr in I Have A Dream and Patrick Henry in Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death is freedom. Both spurred the on looking crowd to righteous applause. The significance of the speeches is exceedingly helped by their use of the rhetoric elements pathos, ethos, logos and the techniques repetition, anaphora, allusion, synecdoche, rhetorical questions and rhetoric.
Pathos is the quality of an actual life experience. It can be helped along by the delivery of the speech and the emotional state of the audience. The ability for pathos to engage an audience is key in a successful delivery of a speech.
The integration of pathos into the speech allows for an increased emotional response from the …show more content…

These rhetorical questions would have stuck in of the listeners as they pondered the question of “freedom or slavery”. The memorability of these rhetorical questions would have helped William Wirt in his reconstruction of the speech. Without memorability Henry’s words of freedom would no longer echo throughout history.
“Give me Liberty or Give me Death” is the concluding line most remembered by hearers of the speech, whether they were present at the speech or hearing it at another time. This ultimatum is Patrick Henry’s answer to the question he proposed at the start of the speech the “question of freedom or slavery”. It is this cry for freedom that is the most important in Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death, both in at the First Virginia Convention, in 1774, and in modern society.
I Have a Dream was spoken by Martin Luter King Jr in front of the Washington Monument during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He calls the march “the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation”. He uses multiple techniques to convey the meaning of his speech, along with the three technical means of persuasion, proposed by Aristotle: Pathos, Ethos and …show more content…

Society cannot listen to recordings of Henry’s speech from when Henry First spoke it. Instead, modern audiences have to interpret his character through his words. Henry’s character is one faced with an ultimatum; “Give me liberty or give me death” is his final cry which is remembered throughout history. It is this final line which shows the audience that Henry’s character is at a crossroads in their life, will they fight for the liberty and truth they so desired or stay in “submission and slavery”. The character resounded with the audience at the Virginia Convention and still resounds with many people around the world today. Henry’s cry for freedom is still as prominent now as it was in

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