To Kill A Mockingbird Rhetorical Analysis Essay

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch utilizes italics, hypophora, and pathos in attempt to persuade the jury to return a not-guilty verdict. As depicted within the scene, Atticus cleverly emphasizes the word “all” to depict the stereotypes that many African American individuals faced at this time. He expounds upon the popular idea that “all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, and that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women” (273) as the citizens in the town believed that someone’s skin tone determined their character. Secondly, Mr. Finch uses hypophora to demonstrate his position and opinion within the court case. “What did she do? She tempted a Negro”

During chapter 10 of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Scout and Jem Finch’s opinion of their father Atticus changes from them being embarrassed by him to them feeling admiration and pride for him and his hidden talents; this teaches the children that there are many things that make up a person and they should not have a narrow or single view of people. In the beginning of the chapter Scout realizes all their schoolmates’ fathers are much younger than Atticus, and this is embarrassing for her. She wishes he could be normal, especially now with all the attention on her father from the trial in which he will be defending a negro. According to Scout’s narrative, “Jem underlined it when he asked Atticus if he was going out for the Methodists

In the book To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee, during chapters seventeen through twenty-one, one of the leading characters, Atticus, has to defend a black man in a court case against two white people. Before the jury is sent to make their decision, Atticus gives a closing argument speech. During his speech, Atticus uses three main types of persuasion called: ethos, pathos, and logos.

Prose appeals to ethos in this essay by appealing to the reader as a mother, educator, and student. By writing from the perspective of both a student and educator, Prose shows how both are affected by assigned literature. By discussing her own two sons, she appeals to readers who are mothers by expressing her concern about their education.

Two forms of argumentative techniques are used most effectively within Atticus’ closing argument in the Tom Robinson trial. One technique used most effectively is anaphora. Atticus states, “...- that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negroes are not to be trusted around our women… You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women-black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire.” This quote uses anaphora whilst using terms repeatedly, such as “some Negro men” and “who has never.” This use of repetition stresses the fact that although white folk

Undoubtedly, one of the most controversial subjects in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, would be whether or not Atticus Finch should have defended Tom Robinson. However, in order to understand this controversy, a person must first be able to understand Atticus Finch himself. Atticus as a character is a very intellectual person who possesses the fortitude to stand up for whatever he believes is right and will not let other people’s choices affect his own. Furthermore, it is also important to understand that Atticus is not a racist, nor does he approve of the idea that one group of people are better than another based on their appearances in general, and because of this, a person can generalize that Atticus’s characteristic traits are why he did not complain when given the task of defending a black man, Tom Robinson, who had been wrongfully accused of raping a white woman. A man that he, as well as a small group of other people from town, viewed as the picture of innocence. In their eyes, Tom was no more than a mockingbird, “[and mockingbirds] don’t do one thing but make music for [people] to enjoy” (Lee 119). Knowing this, anyone with a reasonably strong sense of what is right and what is wrong can conclude that it does make sense for Atticus Finch to have taken the case due to his belief that it is a sin to kill the innocent as well as his courage that allows him to stay true to his ideas, even though when taking the case, he was inevitably going to be putting his

The implication of law and in turn justice was a theme explored in depth throughout both To Kill a Mockingbird and The Castle. Despite the obvious differences between cases, - a trial charging an African American man for rape and a family disputing the eviction from their airport suburb home - both focused on the protagonist’s beliefs and their defiance in achieving, what they believed, was the fair outcome. A quote from To Kill A Mockingbird, “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do” (p. 124). The colloquial and informal choice of words in the quote were used so that all demographics could comprehend the underlying meaning, the phrase was one of the core themes of the text. Lawyer Atticus Finch was requested to defend suspect Tom Robinson, an african american man inculpated of raping a white woman. Atticus, aware that the community who were predisposed to racism would support the plaintiff, knew that the case was not one to be won. The author’s use of dialogue, such as “if I didn’t, I couldn't hold my head up in town, I couldn’t represent this country in legislation” (p. 83), gives the audience an idea of Atticus’ morals and perspective on the case. Atticus persevered with the case in order to influence the way which society viewed those of a different race, for in the time, a black man was charged simply because of his skin colour. The defendant may have lost the case, however, the courage of the characters was not compromised. Similarly to Tom Robinson’s trial, Darryl Kerrigan persevered in

During Tom’s trial, Atticus gave an almost incontrovertible case for Tom’s innocence. Yet in the midst of extreme bias, the jury declares him guilty. “In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins (252),” says Atticus. Also, Atticus has the audacity to say that a white man who cheats a black man, no matter who he is, compares to trash. Even when the white man shows no integrity, racial animosity always wins the fight in the justice

In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, one man affects an entire town as he works to defend a seemingly innocent man. In the novel, Tom Robinson, a black man, is accused of rape by Bob and Mayella Ewell, a white family. In the racist Southern American states, the entire town was naturally predisposed against Tom, wanting to believe that he was the villain and the liar as told in the Ewell’s accusation. No believed in Tom’s pleas of innocence, except for Atticus Finch, the lawyer who would eventually come to defend Tom. Even though Atticus and Tom ultimately did not win the case, they succeeded in beginning to change the way that white people viewed black people.

A New Perspective On, "To Kill a Mocking Bird" In Harper Lee's ,"To Kill a Mocking Bird," Lee takes a stand against social injustice and racial inequality. In "To Kill a Mocking Bird," a man named Atticus Finch, a lawyer, must take the case of a black male accused of raping a white woman. Despite the small district of Maycomb county telling him that Tom Robinson, the black man, was guilty, Atticus chose to believe Tom. He and his two young kids, Scout and Jem, are forced to face the grasp that racial injustice on their small, southern town and learn to take people for who they really are. In Harper Lee's novel," To Kill a Mocking Bird," Lee uses Scout's innocence and Mr. Ewell's inability to understand people's situations to prove that

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch formulates a closing speech proposed to the many that attended Tom Robinson’s trial. Being the lawyer appointed, Atticus must defend a black man, accused of sexually harassing Mayella Ewell, a white woman. It is extensively established that racism was a common predicament during the 1930’s. Lee portrays this entanglement as Atticus exposes not only the Ewells, but also the jury for their lack of justice and their being of perjurers.

Tom tried to convince the court that he did not do it, but the court wanted to believe the simple story of a black man raping a white women. Atticus told Jem, “Tom Robinson’s a colored man, Jem. No jury in this part of the world’s going to say ‘We think you’re guilty but not very’” (294). Even if the jury and many of the town believed that Tom spoke the truth they were not going to speak up because of his social class.

The key to being an outstanding speaker is to have a good use of rhetorical devices. Rhetorical devices help speeches sound better, make you appear more educated, and draws the listener's attention. When using rhetorical devices you want to grab your audience's attention and keep it on you. When that attention is on you, you persuade them to see things in a whole new perspective. A couple examples of rhetorical devices are anaphora, parallelism, and amplification. Some famous speakers that used effective rhetorical devices were Atticus Finch in his closing argument, John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address, and Malala Yousafzai's Speech at the United Nations.

Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama, a sleepy small town similar in many ways to Maycomb, the setting of To Kill a Mockingbird. Like Atticus Finch, the father of Scout, the narrator and protagonist of To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee’s father was a lawyer. Among Lee’s childhood friends was the future novelist and essayist Truman Capote, from whom she drew inspiration for the character Dill. These personal details notwithstanding, Lee maintains that To Kill a Mockingbird was intended to portray not her own childhood home but rather a nonspecific Southern town. “People are people anywhere you put them,” she declared in a 1961 interview.

In a society, the morally wrong idea, sometimes, may be viewed as the acceptable thing. When a person comes under fire for picking the unacceptable side, their ability to prove their position determines who has the real moral high ground. In Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, the previous statement applies to Atticus Finch. His fellow citizens of Maycomb County have set their sights on a young African-American man who has been charged with assault and rape. Atticus, being fully aware of how the people of the town feel toward people like Tom Robinson, already knew what the outcome of the Tom Robinson situation would be even before he fought the trial. He only took it up in hopes of righting the wrong, backward beliefs of his society. The white folk of Maycomb county would see Tom Robinson as a guilty person even if Atticus used logic and reasoning to make them think otherwise; even if anyone else in the whole world were to attempt to do so, they wouldn't change their positions. When Atticus's time came to prove the innocence of Tom Robinson, he put all he had into his words to sway the jurors and the rest of the citizens of Maycomb. In his final argument, Atticus put several persuasive techniques to use, the most effective being his appeals to ethos, his use of anaphora, and his references built by allusion.