What Is Sir Thomas More Utopia Rhetorical Analysis

One of the finest lawyers and scholars of his time, Sir Thomas More , in his essay, “Utopia” expresses the idea of how a good king should care for his people. More’s purpose it to inform the reader that if a King does not care for his people he will have no one to rule over. He creates a harsh tone to convey to the reader that a king's indolence could lead to his downfall. In this essay More uses rhetorical devices like analogy, rhetorical question, and diction to portray his ideas of how a king should treat his people. More begins his idea of “utopia” by making the comparison of how a king cares for his people to how a shepherd cares for his sheep. He illustrates the use of an analogy by comparing how “ it belongs to a king to take more

He includes rhetorical questions for the audience by asking “ Where will you find more quarreling than among beggars?” (7), “Who is more eager for revolution than he who is discontented with his present state of life?” (8), and “Who is more reckless in the endeavor to upset everything, in the hope of getting profit from some source or other, than he who has nothing to lose?” (9-10). He asks these questions in order to make it obvious that starving and mistreated people are harder to control than happy people. The use of rhetorical questions convey that if people are discontent will become unhappy and difficult to control. More closes his essay “Utopia” by applying precise diction to better explain the kind of ruler that people do not want. More includes diction to appeal to the audience by saying “he could not keep them in subjection”(12), that “plundering,and confiscation and by reducing them to beggary”(14) and that “ the king had better amend his own indolence”(25). He uses the words to construct his idea of how a bad king treats is people. The use of diction helps explain that a king who is overbearing, takes from his people , or is lazy is a bad