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The Red Badge Of Courage Rhetorical Questions

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Rhetorical questions are often proposed to help get the audience to question themselves. An example of a rhetorical question is what do you consider to be the value of life? Many people will say life is greater than anything else on Earth, but then why do people go around smashing bugs or destroying trees or getting abortions? “Scholars would talk about symbolism in writing, but no one had asked the writers.” At any state, many other people are forced to consider that their view on the subject is. Stephen Crane most definitely plays with rhetorical questions and the symbols that follow those questions, especially in The Red Badge of Courage and An Episode of War. Stephen Crane definitely asks questions that he doesn’t give answers to and that have further meaning behind the actions in, An Episode of War. The questions he asks sometimes aren’t put blatantly, the reader sometimes has to read deeper into the text to simply find the question. The first question Crane has you infer is who shot the lieutenant in the story. “...when suddenly the lieutenant cried out looked quickly at the man near him as if he suspected it was a case of personal assault,” (pg. 509, line 11). The obvious question is, who shot the lieutenant? Judging by the fact that these men are at war, the assumption would be an enemy soldier, but Crane never really tells you. “ I did found myself wondering what YOU as the rhetorical critic interpreted these signs and what these "signified" meanings mean

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