Jefferson and Paine use of Rhetorical Appeals

In The Declaration Of Independence and The American Crisis, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine use certain appeals to achieve their purposes which is to inform their intended audiences about the importance of the situations that they are expressing. These authors appeal to their audiences by using their own reasoning, personal experiences, presenting themselves as good characters, using facts, details, and emotional experiences as well. Thomas and Paine both try to be persuasive to their audiences and they do so by trying to attract the attention of the readers.

The main tools that Thomas Jefferson uses throughout The Declaration Of Independence is logic and reasoning. He attempts to reach out to the world as his audience by using religion to draw the attention of the religious people by describing how God intends for things to be and how things are supposed to be compared to the dictation of King George.

Jefferson explains to the intended audience why the Declaration of Independence is so important and what it means. He considers the king to be such a tyrant and believes they owe him nothing. To get the reaction he desires from his audience, he presents himself in such a way and uses facts about the damage that the king of Great Britain is doing to the American people to be persuasive about not freedom, but to have what is deserved and for the people to no longer suffer.

Towards the middle of The Declaration Of Independence, Jefferson appeals to the emotions and values of his audience by describing to the readers how King George “ravaged the coasts” and “burned through towns” which negatively affected the people. He appeals to the audience this way so that his readers get a feeling as if they are experiencing the anger and annoyance themselves, just as the people of America are. Another way that Jefferson tries to appeal to his audience is by sharing with his audience experiences that he, as well as others, have gone through.

His purpose for this is to gain the trust of his audience and show just what type of character he is. By doing this, his intention is to show the audience that the people of America ate the “representatives of the United States”, and that it is not King George who represents what the people of America want. His reasoning for using these appeals with his audience to show whose choice it is to make decisions and who it is being affected when being under the control of another country.

Thomas Paine uses these same appeals as well in The American Crisis, just for different purposes. Paine mostly attempts to appeal to his audience emotionally at first and he does this so that his expected audience to relate to things mentioned. The things that are mentioned are the everyday experiences for many people such as conflicts being encountered that so difficult that they create “triumph”.

His purpose is to appeal to the audience more as one of them, more as one of the people involved. Paine’s expectation for the by using an emotional appeal is for the people of America to feel as though they are include; to bring back memories that build up feeling in the reader. He wants the audience to realize that the way things are shouldn’t be and that they should not give up, but continue on defending themselves no matter how hard or difficult it is.

Pain overall mainly appeals to his audience by gaining their trust and showing he is also one of the people. He presents himself as someone with good will and good intentions towards his audience which is the people of America or anywhere that is involved in this crisis. He explains how someone would “[speak their] mind as freely as [they would think would be] prudent” when the people should have the freedom to speak as they please. “America did not want force” and Pain realizes this.

He is experiencing being dictated to in which others feel the same. He expects for people to realize that they should not give up even though others say it is too hard and to give up. By Paine using his own personal experiences, he emphasizes more on the outcome of being under the control of King George. He wants the audience to gather how others feel when experiencing the same as himself.

In The American Crisis, Paine also uses logic to reason with the audience what the right way for things to be is. By Americans choosing to fight to be independent, they ” show [their] faith by [their] works “, not by just running away from it. Some people just do not see the ” full extinct of evil” that is brought upon them when taking orders from another country. Paine sees how it is weakening America. He uses “[his] own line of reasoning” to attempt to convince the audience that he is right.

By using these appeals, both Paine and Jefferson attain their purposes which for Jefferson, it is to justify the importance of the Declaration of Independence and for Paine, it is to American citizens to get rallied up and not to give up. Jefferson mainly claims that because King George is such a tyrant, the people owe him no allegiance or in other words, nothing at all. The reasoning that both, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine use is to achieve such purposes.

Both authors get their points across and what they believe is right. Where The Declaration Of Independence and The American Crisis are similar in some cases, both have different intended audiences and purposes. Paine mainly points out that the American citizens should not give up while Jefferson expects that King George should be given nothing. Both authors use these appeals to convince their audiences how right they are and they do so by using facts, logic, reasoning, and even appealing to the audience emotionally.