Wednesday, September 30

Today, Chapter 3 of Animal Farm was due.

In honor of that -- and in honor of your ever-deepening understanding of pathos, logos, and ethos -- we asked you to answer three questions:

1) Which form of rhetoric (pathos, logos, ethos) do you think the pigs use most often? Explain your thinking and give at least one example from anywhere in your reading to support your opinion.

2) Looking at Squealer's speech on page 52, find one example of each form of rhetoric and write down a quotation that demonstrates it.

3) Beginning with this sentence -- "In his speech on p. 52, Squealer's (pathos, ethos, or logos) is most convincing to the animals" -- write a paragraph that explains your choice and gives at least one piece of textual evidence to support your opinion.

You worked diligently on all these tasks for most of the period. When you were done, we asked you to look at Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail again, and we discussed one particular passage that employed ethos. You pointed out three ways that King used this rhetorical approach: positively (by invoking Biblical examples, the better to sway his audience of ministers), negatively (by invoking Adolf Hitler), and personally (by using himself as an example). We also discussed the reasons that all of King's examples were focused on people who disobeyed laws for moral reasons, or who enacted laws that violated standards of morality. This area -- the friction point between a law and morality -- is one that will come up frequently next week.

Chapters 4 and 5 of Animal Farm are due next Monday -- don't forget!